Gold Nanoparticles Can Be Used to Melt Your Excess Fat

Cosmetic Surgery might Often be Controversial but, it’s More Popular than Ever. Just Last Year, Americans Spent More than $12 Billion on Cosmetic Surgery. One of the Most Common Procedures, Liposuction, though, is Getting a New Technological Twist: a Team of Researchers Determined that, Gold Nanoparticles Can be Used to Melt Fat before being Suctioned Out. Gold Nanoparticles are the New Poster Child for Medical Tech. They’ve been Used for Research Involving Everything from Detecting Cancer to Creating Artificial Skin. One of the Main Traits of Gold Nanoparticles is that, they Heat Up Quickly after Infrared Light Exposure. They Get so Hot that, they Can Literally Melt Certain Kinds of Tissue Away. Researchers Have Looked at their Potential to Kill Cancer Cells, so a Professor at the University of California San Diego Thought that, they Might also be Useful for Taking Out Fat, too. Although Liposuction is a Common Procedure, it is Not Without Fault. It Comes with a Host of Side Effects, like Bruising and has a relatively Long Recovery Time.


The Standard Procedure is to Inject a Patient’s Fat with an Anesthetic and a Saline Solution. Then a Surgeon Inserts a Hollow Needle into the Fatty Area and Scrapes the Fat to Break it Up before Suctioning it Out. Unfortunately, this Technique Isn’t Completely Accurate and Often, Tissue Other than Fat and Nerves Gets Sucked Out in the Process. Ouch. Gold Nanoparticles, however, Simplify the Process. They are Injected into the Fatty Area, which is then Exposed to an Infrared Laser Light. Because Fat Melts at Lower Temperatures than Other Tissue and Nerves, Only Fat is specifically Targeted by the Procedure. After the Fat Melts, it Gets Sucked Out with a Needle. Researchers Successfully Tested this Technique on Butter and Bacon, Followed by Animals. The Results were so Good that, Preclinical Studies Continued. Expect Human Trials Soon.




Info Source:

http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i24/Liposuction-Goes-Nano.html