Silver makes antibiotics thousands of times more effective

Nature News ^ | June 19, 2013 | Brian Owens

[neverdem]

Ancient antimicrobial treatment could help to solve modern bacterial resistance.

Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, has described how silver can disrupt bacteria, and shown that the ancient treatment could help to deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance. The work is published today in Science Translational Medicine1.

“Resistance is growing, while the number of new antibiotics in development is dropping,” says Collins. “We wanted to find a way to make what we have work better.”

Collins and his team found that silver — in the form of dissolved ions(i.e. ionic compounds, aka salts, before being dissolved) — attacks bacterial cells in two main ways: it makes the cell membrane more permeable, and it interferes with the cell’s metabolism, leading to the overproduction of reactive, and often toxic, oxygen compounds. Both mechanisms could potentially be harnessed to make today’s antibiotics more effective against resistant bacteria, Collins says.

Many antibiotics are thought to kill their targets by producing reactive oxygen compounds, and Collins and his team showed that when boosted with a small amount of silver these drugs could kill between 10 and 1,000 times as many bacteria. The increased membrane permeability also allows more antibiotics to enter the bacterial cells, which may overwhelm the resistance mechanisms that rely...

--snip--

Before adding silver to antibiotics, “we’ll have to address the toxicity very carefully”, says Fowler. Ingesting too much silver can also cause argyria, a condition in which the skin turns a blue-grey colour — and the effect is permanent...

[djf]

the effect is permanent...

Same can be said about that “death” thingie..

Choose your poison!

[LadyDoc]

Old idea. 40 years ago we used to use silver nitrate on burns: but it did make a mess (turned everything black). Now we use Silvadene instead.

The problem is that you can’t just drink it and expect it to work.

And if you take too much of it, your skin turns grey (not dangerous, but ugly).

[CARDINALRULES]

You would think FReepers would be smarter to read the true story behind that guy instead of buying into the headline.

Colloidal silver is great to use on pets too. It saved my cat’s life a few years ago. He was most likely a day from death. We put some on his wound and dropped some into his mouth. We did this every 2 hours or so and the next morning he was drinking and eating again.

—

I have 1% silver sulfadiazine cream (Silvadene) that I was prescribed when I was in the hospital for cellulitis. I asked if silver would help heal it, the doctor said it couldn’t hurt. I made sure my doctor keeps it in my list of medicine I use so I can get refills.

I use it on my feet when they crack open - how I got cellulitis both times- on my many cysts and boils, burns and any other wounds like when I fell or the damn crazy cat - not the above cat- scratched the hell out of my leg.

[DannyTN]

I prefer to think of it as God blessed the Doctors with knowledge and skill. And God tends to calls those that won’t take advantage of doctors home a little earlier than he calls those that do take advantage of them.

[RegulatorCountry]

It’s not just silver. Certainly gold, but it’s cost prohibitive. Even copper to an extent. The known antimicrobial benefit of certain metals is more often environmental or topical rather than internal (via ingestion), though.

There are all manner of natural antimicrobials. Salt is a great one. Most of your typical kitchen spice rack. Vinegar. Sugar. Honey. Top of the organic heap would be garlic in various forms, fresh and especially oils.

Then there are various other essential oils used topically. Oil of oregano is powerful. So is melaleuca oil, otherwise known as tea tree oil.

Good old chlorine bleach is greatly underrated as an environmental antimicrobial also.

You’ve got them at your disposal, it’s just that few have been taught to view them in that manner let alone use them for this purpose. The time may be coming that they’re all you have.

[poobear]

You owe me another monitor and a cup of coffee! :)

[James C. Bennett]

Premature delivery once used to be a death sentence - they used to not see life outside the womb, at all. We are slowly progressing to the point where soon an artificial womb will first allow better intensive care to those born prematurely, and after that, to produce humans without a natural womb.

You may feel free to pigeon-hole reality however you want in your mind, but the fact is, humans have altered lifespans across countries, across cultures, with the only commonality being the increased application of science, a lot of it developed on the borders of ethics as well. Many vaccines, for example, use products derived from cell lines extracted from human embryos.

[theBuckwheat]

The dosage required to give an adult argyria is magnitudes higher than the dosage that is adequate for medical purposes.

from: Silver Toxicity - How much is harmful?

One tsp. contains 5 ml. of liquid

One ppm concentration is the same as 1 milligram (mg.) per liter
(Example: 10 PPM colloidal silver contains 10 mg of silver in one liter of liquid)
(Example: One tsp. of 10 PPM colloidal silver contains 50 micrograms of silver)

The EPA reference dose for a 160 pound adult (the average amount consumed per day in food and water): 364 micrograms per day.

The EPA critical dose for a 160 pound adult (the amount that should not be exceeded in daily consumption): 1.09 milligrams per day

The EPA proposed limit for silver in drinking water is: 0.1 mg per liter ( 0.1 PPM)

The average person consumes approximately 90 mcg. of silver/day in their food

The estimated dosage of silver required to trigger an anti-infection response (based on anecdotal reports and other data); is believed to be approximately 1 milligram of silver
References (8) and ( 70) state that the estimated total dosage of silver required to treat serious infections such as LYME disease is: Approximately 18 to 90 milligrams of silver over the period of one month.

The estimated accumulated dosage required to produce argyria is: Approximately one to six grams of silver, depending on the reference cited. Some references state as high as 50 grams.(1)(62)

The estimated single dose lethal quantity of silver is: Approximately ten grams of silver (56)

http://www.info-archive.com/colsil%20silvertox.htm

[nomad]

Like papa smurf here; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212557/Blue-man-Paul-Karason-blue-self-medicates-silver-skin-condition.html

[Bulwyf]

I’ve heard a lot of good things about the curing aspects of silver. I’ve even heard about it getting rid of tumours and such.

[Smokin' Joe]

Not sure what got me. There were about 30 little red dots and a few hours later 20+ had become 1/4 inch black spots. Antibiotic and band-aids, the first round, and when I peeled those off, out came plugs of dead meat. I spent the afternoon with a jackknife and a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide I carry in my med bag, scraping out dead meat and irrigating wound sites. No fun.

A couple of debrieding/irrigation sessions later, the mess had stabilized, with the largest bite (open wound) about 5/8-3/4 inch across. they still burned, off and on, and the closest I can describe that is someone putting a cigarette out on the skin. The last of them scabbed over 3 months later--(I went through a LOT of band-aids--a tube of the silver chloride ointment, and a tube of basic triple antibiotic, and every dressing change I irrigated the wound sites with peroxide.

When I finally made it in to see a doctor, he said "I have never seen anything like that". (big help, that)

I did some research on my own and found out about spider bites. Considering, a limited venom load, some bites not festering, multiple bites all seem to point to a hatch in the bedding of the location housing I was staying in. I bagged up the linnens, put them outside (winter), and did not sleep in the bunk for the duration of the job. No new bites.

Next well, I had a different housing unit.

The last and largest to heal scabbed over after roughly 3 months, now it looks like I got hit with a shotgun (both feet, one shin).

[elcid1970]

Wasn’t it during the Civil War that the first battlefield photographers discovered that silver nitrate used for fixing negative plates also served as an antiseptic to treat wounds?

[tbw2]

That condition was genetic, not due to silver consumption.

[Slump Tester]

Yeah, I know. Did you read my link? I remember when that was in “Science 82”.

[novemberslady]

Bkmk

[S.O.S121.500]

BOOKbump

[LadyDoc]

I am unsure when it was discovered, but I wouldn't be surprised if the docs used it during the civil war, and "stole" it from the photography plates.

Wikipedia suggests that it was used in the days of Hippocrates.

The southern doctors did all sorts of stuff to try to keep their patients alive. Check this article.link from the Va medical society

And a manual on civil war medicine can be read here if you are interested in the subject.

[Lancey Howard]

The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery.

Makes me wonder what miraculous healing effects gold can have on the human body. There's a reason gold has been so valued for thousands of years. What could be more valuable than a fountain of youth, or a cure for everything?

[GOPJ]

Curad makes a silver chloride ointment which was the only thing which would stop the pain—an immediate cooling effect. The bites took three months to heal over...

I got a minor spider bite 5 or 6 weeks ago - and it hasn't gone away yet - still itches... I'll try the Curad.

[roofgoat]

I could make a horror movie out of that story. People wouldn’t sleep well ever again.