Gold in Medicine

Electron Microscope: Gold in Medicine: buy gold at auIn the past gold was often associated with health.  This was largely due to a naive belief that anything so beautiful must be beneficial to health.  Even today some types of alternative medicine attribute healing properties to gold and until recently gold salts were used as an anti-inflammatory arthritis treatment.

Medical treatments do not use pure gold but the salts of gold.  This is because pure gold is of no pharmacological value because it does not react to any substances found in the human body.

Various salts of gold can also be used as medical “tracers”.  Colloidal gold is formed by the interaction of gold chloride with citrate or ascorbate ions.  It attracts proteins to its surface and creates hot spots of anti-bodies when viewed through an electron microscope.  Strangely Colloidal gold is also used as the gold paint in ceramic design.

Forms of gold are also used in other medical research applications including being used as a conductive coating to biological specimens and other non-conducting materials thus enabling the specimen to be viewed through an electron microscope.

The isotope gold-198 has also been used in some cancer therapies.

Gold alloys are commonly used in dentistry especially in crowns and bridges.  Gold is useful in dentistry because it is malleable.
 

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