subject: The Cell Damage Caused by Ethanol May Be Alleviated by Silver Nanoparticles [print this page] The Cell Damage Caused by Ethanol May Be Alleviated by Silver Nanoparticles
Recently, researchers from the University of Barcelona made a study on the role of silver nanoparticels. The study was carried out by these researchers cooperating with the staff of the Magnetism and Nanotechnology laboratory of the University of Santiago de Compostela. They study they conducted proved that the cell damage caused by ethanol may be alleviated by silver nanoparticles which are composed of a few of silver atoms.
Gustavo Egea is a professor with the Department of Cell Biology, Immunology and Neurosciences of the Faculty of Medicine at the UB and an affiliated researcher for the Institute of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology (IN2UB) and the August Pi i Sunyer Miomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS). He said that the results of the study completely proved that silver nanoparticels, the clusters of very small numbers of silver atoms could probably accelerate ethanol oxidation. The concentrations of silver nanoparticles are quite similar to those found in the blood of alcoholics. What's more, the concentrations of silver nanoparticles are basically equal to membrane potential and pH that are compatible with values exhibited by mammalian cells.
In the study, silver nanoparticles were applied to astrocytes which are in ethanol. All these astrocytes are always being with neurons. In addition, astrocytes are widely used to provide a model which can be imitated to study the physiopathological mechanisms of alcohol in foetal alcohol syndrome. Foetal alcohol syndrome is a kind of disease which has been formed before babies are born. The disease is caused by excessive levels of alcohol consumed by the mother. The result of foetal alcohol syndrome is rather serious, which can result in a wide range of severe neurological disorders.
There are a lot of harms caused by alcohol to nerve cells. In some certain situations, alcohol can even lead to programmed cell-death and a kind of change of the actin cytoskeleton. In the study, after the silver nanoparticles were applied to cells in ethanol, the actin cytoskeleton had obvious improvements. What's more, the cell-death was stopped. Javier Selva is a lecturer with theDepartment of Cell Biology, Immunology and Neuroscienceand first author of the paper. He explained that the silver nanoparticles played a cytoprotective role in alleviating the harmful effect caused by ethanol to astrosytes.
The study not only analyzed the electrocatalytic properties of silver nanoparticles, but also studied the silver nanoparticles' potential biological applications. The electrocatalytic properties of silver nanoparticles and their potential biological applications were combined to get a more scientific and systematic result. Gustavo Egea, a professor with the Department of Cell Biology, Immunology and Neurosciences of the Faculty of Medicine at the UB said that there is a bright future for electrochemistry which now is applied to cell biology, as this application can take control of various properties of nanoparticles which are composed of a small amount of silver atoms.
The researchers also found that alterations caused by some other primary alcohols like methanol and butanol could also be stopped by the nanoparticles. But some other alterations caused by such toxins as hydrogen peroxide could probably not be improved by the nanoparticles.
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