[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Old Curative Gets New Life at Tiny Scale

[Terry W. Colvin]

Something like what astronomy is to astrology (namely, legit), here

is what nano is to homeopathy. Maybe....

- Wade

*****

December 20, 2005
Old Curative Gets New Life at Tiny Scale

By BARNABY J. FEDER

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/health/20nano.html?pagewanted=print

Silver, one of humankind's first weapons against bacteria, is  
receiving new respect for its antiseptic powers, thanks to the  
growing ability of researchers to tinker with its molecular structure.

Doctors prescribed silver to fight infections at least as far back as  
the days of ancient Greece and Egypt. Their knowledge was absorbed by  
Rome, where historians like Pliny the Elder reported that silver  
plasters caused wounds to close rapidly. More recently, in 1884, a  
German doctor named C. S. F. Crede demonstrated that a putting a few  
drops of silver nitrate into the eyes of babies born to women with  
venereal disease virtually eliminated the high rates of blindness  
among such infants.

But silver's time-tested - if poorly understood - versatility as a  
disinfectant was overshadowed in the latter half of the 20th century  
by the rise of antibiotics.

Now, with more and more bacteria developing resistance to antibiotic  
drugs, some researchers and health care entrepreneurs have returned  
to silver for another look. This time around, they are armed with  
nanotechnology, a fast-developing collection of products and skills  
that helps researchers deploy silver compounds in ways that maximize  
the availability of silver ions - the element's most potent form.  
Scientists also now have a better understanding of the weaknesses of  
their microbial adversaries.

One of the urgent goals is to prevent bacterial infections that each  
year strike 2 million hospital patients and kill 90,000, according to  
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such infections are  
usually treated with large doses of antibiotics and sometimes with  
repeat surgeries. They cost the health care system roughly $4.5  
billion annually, and the challenge is growing with the spread of  
drug-resistant microbes.

The latest advance for silver therapy comes from AcryMed, a small  
company in Portland, Ore., that has invented a process to deposit  
silver particles averaging about 10 nanometers - less than a  
thousandth the diameter of a human a hair - on medical devices.  
AcryMed's first customer, I-Flow, makes a silver-coated catheter that  
pumps painkillers into the wounds created by surgery.

I-Flow got federal regulatory clearance on Dec. 2 to sell the device  
and has already begun shipping them to customers. The nanoscale  
particles have so much surface area to react with the microbes, in  
relation to their volume, that small concentrations are effective  
antiseptics.

"The equivalent of a teaspoon of silver in a seven-lane Olympic-size  
swimming pool is enough to do the job," said Bruce Gibbons, the  
microbiologist who is AcryMed's founder and chief executive.

AcryMed hopes to reach agreements with catheter companies larger than  
I-Flow, including the makers of urinary catheters, the most common  
breeding ground for hospital infections. Nano-scale silver could also  
eventually make its way onto permanently implanted devices like  
silicone breasts, artificial hips and knees and pacemakers.

The term nanotechnology is derived from the nanometer, one-billionth  
of a meter. Nanoscale materials often exhibit unusual structures and  
behaviors compared with bulkier quantities of the same material.

AcryMed began developing wound dressings with large-scale silver  
particles in the 1990's. It adapted its process to make smaller and  
smaller particles when medical-device makers asked it for silver  
coatings. As the particles shrank to nanoscale dimensions, they  
became so highly reactive that AcryMed was able to bind them to  
virtually every glass and plastic material it tested.

As has often been the case in nanotechnology, AcryMed is rushing to  
get products into the market long before the nano-scale phenomena it  
is exploiting are fully understood. It is not entirely clear, for  
example, how silver kills many bacteria at the diluted concentrations  
considered safe for medical use.

AcryMed also admits that it cannot fully explain the forces that  
produce the surface-binding performance of its particles. It is a  
crucial trait, though, because surface coverage that is even and  
thorough blocks the formation of a thick carpet of bacteria known as  
biofilm.

Preventing the build up of biofilms, which eventually release large  
masses of free-floating bacteria, is in turn a key to avoiding  
infections, according to Dr. Dennis Maki, a professor of medicine and  
the head of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin  
Medical School and Pubic Health.


Copyright 2005The New York Times Company



-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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