Treating Battlefield Injuries with Nanoemulsions
BY Herschel Smith
16 years, 4 weeks ago
Imagine that you are in Iraq and you receive this letter from your father.
“If you become wounded – especially on your extremities but also even on your whole body – and a doctor begins to discuss rapidly propagating infection, or amputation of limbs, you need immediately to request that he administer 50 Rads of gamma or x-ray radiation to the affected area. If the infection doesn’t begin to retreat within 12 hours, request another 50 Rads. If the doctor doesn’t understand or wants to talk about this, have him call me. You know how to reach me at any hour, night or day.”
The idea has to do with radiation hormesis, and at least to practitioners and those familiar with it, it’s science is well known and well understood. But there is help coming in the form of treatment of battlefield injuries with nanoemulsions.
In the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers often suffer shrapnel wounds and burns as a result of improvised explosive device blasts.
But other threats – bacteria, viruses and fungi – linger in the air and soil. Contact with the soldiers’ broken skin can lead to debilitating and potentially life-threatening infections.
With the goal of developing a treatment that can be applied to soldiers’ wounds at battle zones and hospitals to prevent infections, the U.S. Department of Defense allocated a $1.5 million grant to researchers at the University of Michigan and the NanoBio Corporation, the university announced Tuesday.
Researchers at the university’s Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences and the Ann Arbor-based NanoBio Corp., a biopharmeceutical company, will use the money to study the effects of nanoemulsion-based therapies on curbing wound and burn infections in combat situations.
“A broadly effective nanoemulsion-based wound treatment that can be safely and easily applied at the time of injury, without causing pain or interfering with wound healing, would have great value to prevent infection, increase survival and enable more rapid healing of wounded United States military personnel,” Dr. James R. Baker, the principal investigator for the grant, said in prepared remarks.
Nanoemulsions are made up of soybean oil, alcohol, water and surfactants emulsified into droplets 200 to 600 nanometers in diameter, according to the release. Research shows that nanoemulsions are effective in combating various bacteria and viruses.
The two research entities will develop 10 new nanoemulsion formulations against bacteria, fungi and spores in lab culture studies. The formulations will then be studied on animals for safety and effectiveness before moving on to human trials.
Nanoemulsions have shown promising results in other aspects of health care. The application of nanoemulsions for the treatment of cold sores is currently undergoing phase 3 clinical trials. Nanoemulsions have also been studied to treat cystic fibrosis infections and develop vaccines against influenza and bioterrorism agents.
The $1.5 million grant will be distributed to the University of Michigan and NanoBio Corp. over a three-year period.
Faster please!
“Nanoemulsions are made up of soybean oil, alcohol, water and surfactants emulsified into droplets 200 to 600 nanometers in diameter, according to the release.”
Reads much like the shampoo the wife buys less the alcohol.
Except the little detail of the emulsion consisting of nano-droplets. Details, details …
I linked this articel to Wikipedia as well! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Now… slow down there cowboy. I’m not to sure where the gamma rays come in to play with the rest of the article body.. but we’ll leave that one alone for now. Let’s stick with the title – Just because it has the sexy “nano” in it, doesn’t make it a slam dunk. I’m certainly one fella who believes in nanotechnology and have written about its potential disruptive influence in medicine. But one thing that has been consistent since the introduction of antimicrobials. That is, topical application to a wound bed is ineffective at treating infection. We learned this in World War I – relearned in World War II and it finally sunk in some time on or about the Korean War. Additionally, the worst infections, necrotizing fascial and soft tissue infections, require surgical excision of the source because the tissue is already dead (and even doctor McCoy can’t cure that).
Does this mean that the research is doomed? No… not at all. Just that I am not ready to get all goo-goo eyed over the prospect and would proceed forward with cautious optimism.
FaST Surgeon
The common theme between the two (radiation hormesis and nanoemulsions) was the promised deliverance from infection and its effects. The difference is that radiation treatments stop rapidly propagating infection, while I take it that the promise of nanoemulsions stops the onset of it to begin with (or perhaps I am reading the article wrong).
Nothing can reverse dead tissue, but radiation hormesis is proven technology at stopping the growth and spread of it. It’s proven and tested.
I can think of one advantage to nanoemulsions, that being the larger surface area to volume ratio that comes with smaller droplets and thus the more efficient application of the surfactants. But what do I know. That’s why more study is needed.
[…] Despite the fact that high doses of ionizing radiation are detrimental, substantial data from both humans and experimental animals show that biologic functions are stimulated by low dose radiation (Luckey 1980). The word “hormesis” is derived from the Greek word “hormaein” which means “to excite”. It has long been known that many popular substances such as alcohol and caffeine have mild stimulating effects in low doses but are detrimental or even lethal in high doses. In the early 1940s C. Southam and his coworker J. Erlish found that despite the fact that high concentrations of Oak bark extract inhibited fungi growth, low doses of this agent stimulated fungi growth. They modified starling’s word “hormone to “hormesis” to describe stimulation induced by low doses of agents which are harmful or even lethal at high doses. They published their findings regarding the new term “hormesis” in 1943 (Bruce M. 1987). Generally, hormesis is any stimulatory or beneficial effect, induced by low doses of an agent, that can not be predicted by the extrapolation of detrimental or lethal effects induced by high doses of the same agent. During the 1950`s, Luckey, a pioneer researcher in radiation hormesis, indicated that low dose dietary antibiotics caused a growth surge in livestock. Later he found that hormesis could be induced effectively by low doses of ionizing radiation. In 1980 the first complete report on radiation hormesis was published (Luckey TD 1980). In this report he reviewed numerous articles regarding radiation hormesis. Since the first reports, 3000 papers have been Anyone can also check out this related post: https://www.captainsjournal.com/2010/10/13/treating-battlefield-injuries-with-nanoemulsions/ […]