Medary.com

Sodium nitrite, common preservative added to processed meats, appears to have some healthful benefits:

The scientists are so convinced of nitrite's promise that lead researcher Dr. Mark T. Gladwin says the government will pursue drug development on its own if necessary.

"We are turning organs into hot dogs," Gladwin jokes. Then he turns serious: "We think we stumbled into an innate protection mechanism."

If it works, "this drug would be pennies to dollars per day," says Dr. Christian Hunter of California's Loma Linda University. By January, Hunter hopes to begin studies of nitrite treatment for babies with an often fatal disease called pulmonary hypertension. "It's so easy to use."

Gladwin and an NIH cardiologist, Dr. Richard Cannon III, discovered nitrite's effect by accident while studying a related compound, nitric oxide, long known to improve blood flow by dilating blood vessels, but difficult to use as a drug.

Gladwin and Cannon injected sodium nitrite into healthy volunteers. Tiny doses almost tripled blood flow. Moreover, when people exercised, nitrite levels plummeted in the muscles being worked — the body was using it.