GOLD COULD MAKE YOU THINNER

Liposuction goes nano

Summer is finally here and so too body hang-ups. Taking care of our body isn’t a long, quiet river and sometimes, some extra pounds can be an extra burden in our daily life. A USCD professor Adah Almutairi and her brother Khalid, a cosmetic surgeon, did some tests using gold particles and realized that those particles may have other applications beyond their current uses in medical treatments.

The benefits of using gold nanoparticles are that they attack and kill malignant tumors by heating up quickly when exposed to infrared light. When tissue-penetrating infrared light is shone through the skin, electrons on the surface of the nanoparticles are excited, generating enough heat to destroy unwanted tissue.

“By injecting gold nanoparticles and breaking up fat tissues with the resulting heat, nerves and connective tissues are spared the damage that mechanical removal causes. Fat melts at a lower temperature than the surrounding tissues burn, so the integrity of the tissue is maintained”, according to Khalid.

Almutairi and her brother established a proof of concept by injecting gold nanorods into butter and bacon. And with the use of an infrared laser, they were able to liquefy the fatty substances in just a few minutes.

They have since filed patents and formed a company, NanoLipo, to bring the technology to market. Nanoparticle-assisted liposuction is currently in animal testing phase, and results appear to be highly promising. Human trials are scheduled for later this year, and if all goes well, liposuction aided by gold nanoparticles could be on the market as early as 2017.