Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Metals in medicine are used in organic systems for diagnostic and treatment purposes. [1] Inorganic elements are also essential for organic life as cofactors in enzymes called metalloproteins . When metals are under or over-abundant in the body, equilibrium must be returned to its natural state via interventional and natural methods.
Nitric oxide is considered an anti anginal drug: It causes vasodilation, which can help with ischemic pain, known as angina, by decreasing the cardiac workload. By dilating (expanding) the arteries, nitric oxide drugs lower arterial pressure and left ventricular filling pressure. [91]
The medical uses of silver include its use in wound dressings, creams, and as an antibiotic coating on medical devices. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Wound dressings containing silver sulfadiazine or silver nanomaterials may be used to treat external infections.
People may become sensitized to certain metals by skin contact, usually by wearing or holding consumer products (including non-metal products, like textiles and leather treated with metals), or sometimes after exposure at work. Contact with damaged skin makes sensitization more likely. Medical implants may also cause allergic reactions.
The metal ion in this reaction can be reduced, oxidized, and then re-reduced, in a process called redox cycling that can generate reactive oxygen species. [ citation needed ] The relative importance of the antioxidant and pro-oxidant activities of antioxidant vitamins is an area of current research, but vitamin C, for example, appears to have a ...
The use of gold compounds has decreased since the 1980s because of numerous side effects and monitoring requirements, limited efficacy, and very slow onset of action. Most chemical compounds of gold, including some of the drugs discussed below, are not salts, but are examples of metal thiolate complexes.
For example, arsenopyrite, a common impurity in gold- and copper-containing ores, liberates arsenic trioxide upon heating in air. The processing of such minerals has led to numerous cases of poisonings, [ 21 ] and after the mine is closed, the leftover trioxide waste will present environmental hazard (as was the case with the Giant Mine , for ...
Biology and medicine have few uses for antimony. Treatments containing antimony, known as antimonials, are used as emetics. [89] Antimony compounds are used as antiprotozoan drugs. Potassium antimonyl tartrate, or tartar emetic, was once used as an anti-schistosomal drug from 1919 on. It was subsequently replaced by praziquantel. [90]