Abstract:
Methanol poisoning is common in low income countries and such harmful
intoxication causes severe metabolic disturbances. It may cause death
under serious cases of methanol toxicity. Although methanol itself may
be harmless, but it is oxidized to formaldehyde, further it breakdowns
to formic acid which is lethal in humans with high concentration. The
breakdown is assisted by two major enzymes alcohol dehydrogenase and
formaldehyde dehydrogenase. High accumulation of formic acid within
humans imposes larger threats causing casualties in extreme cases if
remains untreated. During methanol poisoning the primary therapeutic
application of ethanol is administered to slowdown the formation of
toxic metabolites by competitive substitution of the methanol due to its
intrinsic binding affinity. Moreover, supportive role of administering
sodium bicarbonate in the patient assist the neutralization of the
metabolic acidosis in human. In this research article, we formulate a
mathematical model to study the effect of co-administration of ethanol
and sodium bicarbonate to treat methanol toxicity among humans. We
studied the system analytically and numerically and observed the
dynamics of the therapy in an impulsive fashion. We have obtained a
parameter dependent maximum dosing time interval to perform complete
competitive inhibition of the methanol below the safe threshold level
for recovery of the intoxicated human patients. Our analytical and
numerical results are in accordance with the published experimental
findings.
