Silver bullet for cancer: Metal can kill some tumours better than chemotherapy w/ fewer side effects

... British researchers now say that silver compounds are as effective at killing certain cancer cells as a leading chemotherapy drug, but with potentially far fewer side-effects.

They compared it to Cisplatin, currently used to treat a wide variety of cancers, but known to have harsh side effects including nausea, vomiting and even kidney damage.
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Researchers from the University of Leeds conducted lab tests which exposed breast and colon cancer cells to various silver-based chemicals over a six day period.

Results, published in journal Dalton Transactions, showed that these silver-compounds were ‘as effective as Cisplatin’ at killing cancer with potentially fewer side effects.

While the team are still unsure about how exactly silver battles cancer, they think its effectiveness may be caused by the structure surrounding silver atoms, known as its ligand.

They think this may help release the silver ion into cells when it enters the body, killing any cancer.

Study author Dr Charlotte Willans plans to spend the next year looking closely at what effect silver has on both cancerous and healthy cells, and whether it could be a safe and effective new anti-cancer drug.

She said: 'It’s certainly an exciting discovery, although I think we have a lot of work to do in the future. It opens the doors in terms of what we can do and investigate.
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h4rdware said:

Articles like this only ever appear in newspapers like that - so they will never be taken seriously. Sometimes I think those things are kept going for the sole purpose of 'poisoning the well'. I would not be surprised.

Another way of looking at it of course - that they have less of a reputation to defend and therefore more willing to print things their straight-laced counterparts won't touch.

Either way, important articles only ever appear in crappy publications next to crappy articles. Only well-filtered safe stuff appears in the respected ones.

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