Onions Against Clots

"In France," a well-traveled patient told a doctor in Newcastle upon Tyne, "when a horse develops clots in its legs, it is treated with a diet of garlic and onions." The doctor was a Burma-born heart-disease researcher, I. Sudhakaran Menon, and the remark suggested to him a novel line of attack on the problem of clot formation in human blood vessels.

If a man eats a fat-loaded meal, the strength of the anticlotting factors in his blood decreases sharply within two or three hours, proportionately increasing the risk that clots may form and block veins in his legs (thrombophlebitis) or cause a heart attack by blocking coronary arteries. Was it possible, Menon wondered, that onions could cancel out this effect? Menon persuaded the cardiologists at Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle to let him test the idea with 22 volunteer patients.

Fried or Boiled. Fourteen patients ate a breakfast containing 31 oz. of fat. One day, they got this unappetizing meal without onions, and their blood-borne protection against clotting promptly dropped. Another day, the breakfast was enhanced by the addition of 2 oz. of fried onions. And after that, despite the extra fat used in frying, their levels of anticlotting factors rose instead of falling. The other eight patients were tested with boiled onions, with much the same result.

Most of the drugs now used to guard against clot formation in blood vessels have to be injected, and their effect is short-lived. Some even produce allergic reactions, Menon notes in the British

Medical Journal. Just what it is in onions that exerts a protective effect is not known, but Menon hopes to find it by peeling off layer after layer of the many complex chemicals contained in the lachrymatory vegetable.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.