Artificial stomach

New British scientists have created a kind of artificial stomach that is slightly smaller than a laptop. Its operation is controlled by pre-installed software parameters such as food retention time, gastric secretion .

Besides some artificial devices that have been successfully built like kidneys, hearts ., recently, British scientists have successfully built a shiny, high-tech box that can play a role. identical to human digestive system.

Dr. Martin Wickham of the Food Research Institute in Norwich (UK), the head of the manufacturing research group, said there were a lot of ' digestion ' models before, but they often have quite a simple structure and often use specific enzymes with enzymes that act similarly to the chemical reactions that take place in the stomach.

The patented artificial stomach is a two-part model and is only slightly larger than a laptop . The upper half consists of a funnel used to mix food, stomach acid and digestive enzymes. When this hydration process is completed, the food will be crushed in a silver metal tube placed in a transparent box, allowing nutrients to be absorbed easily.

(Photo: Biotech)

The operation of artificial stomach is controlled by pre-installed software parameters such as food retention time in the stomach, hormone response, gastric secretion in different digestive stages , and setting the mode according to the digestive system of young children or adults.

Unlike previous digestive device models, Wickham's stomach model incorporates the physiological factors of the digestive system, including gastric contraction to mix food and Put them in the digestive tract.

With a capacity of only about half the size of the real stomach, the artificial stomach can " eat " about 680 grams of food, equivalent to the normal serving. The team said the device works like a real stomach, even though it can cause . vomiting.

The British government funded research to deploy this artificial stomach model at a cost of approximately 1.8 million USD.

According to the team, human understanding of what actually happens in the gastrointestinal tract is still very primitive, but they hope that the artificial stomach model will help add some to the ant That way. Meanwhile, some other experts argue that any artificial digestive system carries inherent limitations.

Dr Stephen Bloom, Dean of the Department of Metabolic Medicine at the Royal College of London, said: "The stomach is a very complicated organ, so it is not possible to create a model that takes on all of the it. However, consideration of issues such as food degradation and the role of enzymes in the stomach model is fully feasible.

Artificial stomachs are attracting the attention of business manufacturers. Some companies want to use this device to assess whether biscuits can deliver a special nutrient into the small intestine. While other companies want to use this device to determine whether soil contaminants (which children can swallow when outdoors) are absorbed by the body.

MSc. Van Tai