【英语时差8,16】吸血蝙蝠

（单词翻译）

Anyone who reads gothic fiction will tell you that vampires² are bad news. People who read modern medical journals, however, might disagree–in fact, they think vampires just might help save lives. The kind of vampire¹ I’m talking about is Desmodus rotundus, commonly known as the “vampire bat.” Yep, these little creatures are real; and even though they almost never turn into suave³ Romanian counts to drool over, they do drool a lot themselves. That’s because their saliva⁴ is an essential part of their dining habits. When a vampire bat latches⁵ onto, say, a steer⁶, it needs to keep the blood flowing from the puncture⁷ made by its teeth. That’s achieved by a natural anti-coagulant in the vampire bat’s saliva. Despite in the movies, vampire bats almost never drink human blood. But people do suffer from other blood problems–a leading one being stroke. Stroke is caused by a clotting⁸ in the blood which stops the flow and can starve areas of the brain of oxygen. Doctors have generally broken up clots⁹ with a compound called tPA. TPA works okay, but it has dangerous side effects, and can even hurt brain cells. A better idea? Bring in the bats, says researcher Robert Medcalf, a biochemist from Australia. Vampire bat spit contains a different compound, DSPA, which does the good things tPA does with far fewer side-effects. DSPA is now being tried on patients who have suffered a stroke; the data should be in within a year. If it works, doctors might have found an unlikely friend–the vampire bat.