Unstickers. nanoscale silver grains (black spots) can keep the cells of blood platelets to bind together.
S. Shrivastava et al. ACS Nano
Millions of people worldwide are prone to dangerous blood clots. researchers have now had an early success with a new way to prevent - and strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms they cause. nanosized particles of silver can stop sticky blood cells called platelets to cling together in laboratory mice strains, reports the team.
Platelets help stop bleeding body. But if they agglutinate too, they may also form clots in the blood. DVT, for example, can form in the leg and block blood flow. If the clot is not broken quickly using injections of powerful anticoagulants, it can break off and cut off the blood supply to the heart or brain, with fatal consequences. As a result, nearly 500 million patients worldwide coagulation-related disorders - including this reporter -. Must take daily doses of anticoagulants, which carry the dangers of their own, as spontaneous and uncontrollable internal bleeding
The key is to find an agent which prevents platelets from sticking together too without hindering their ability to shunt bleeding. Recent research on silver nanoparticles - tiny metal grains to less than 1 / 50,000th the width of a human hair - have indicated that they might do the trick. So a biomedical team of the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India, began to explore their potential, in collaboration with materials science colleagues at the university and the international advanced Research Center for Powder Metallurgy and new materials in Balapur, India.
researchers injected mice with the genetically modified blood to be prone to clotting and then administered nanosilver. As reports of the online team in ACS Nano , nano-silver particles inhibit the ability of platelets sticky surface proteins to bind the cells together into aggregates, just like adding sand tape reduces its ability to stick. "This helps the nano-silver to keep platelets in an inactive state," says biochemist and co-author Debabrata Dash of Banaras. The nanoparticles were "much more effective" than current therapies, he said. At the same time the nanoparticles do not interfere with other proteins in the blood that help form clots, as do conventional anticoagulants, so that the risk of uncontrolled bleeding is reduced.
Dash notes that the nanoparticles appear "to be safe enough for human beings", but like any new medical technology, they will study the potential toxic effects.
cell biologist Jonathan Gibbins of the University of Reading in the UK agrees that caution is warranted. "The work is at a relatively early stage, with key issues such as toxicity and the remaining mechanisms of action to treat potential," he said. "But this is certainly a new and unexpected dimension to platelet research." Similarly, biochemist Stan Heptinstall the University of Nottingham in the UK warns that the research is "the beginning." The key question, he says, is whether nanosilver will impair the important functions for blood clotting in human body.
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