Thompson Nishone, Boone-Kukoyi Zainab, Shortt Raquel, Lansiquot Carisse, Kioko Bridgit, Bonyi Enock, Toker Salih, Ozturk Birol, Aslan Kadir
Department of Chemistry, Morgan State University, 1700 East Cold Spring Lane, Baltimore, MD 21251, USA.
Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Morgan State University, 1700 East Cold Spring Lane, Baltimore, MD 21251, USA.
Molecules. 2016 Oct 18;21(10):1388. doi: 10.3390/molecules21101388.
Gout is caused by the overproduction of uric acid and the inefficient metabolism of dietary purines in humans. Current treatments of gout, which include anti-inflammatory drugs, cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors, and systemic glucocorticoids, have harmful side-effects. Our research laboratory has recently introduced an innovative approach for the decrystallization of biological and chemical crystals using the Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Decrystallization (MAMAD) technique. In the MAMAD technique, microwave energy is used to heat and activate gold nanoparticles that behave as "nano-bullets" to rapidly disrupt the crystal structure of biological crystals placed on planar surfaces. In this study, crystals of various sizes and compositions were studied as models for tophaceous gout at different stages (i.e., uric acid as small crystals (10-100 μm) and l-alanine as medium (300 μm) and large crystals (~4400 μm). Our results showed that the use of the MAMAD technique resulted in the reduction of the size and number of uric acid and l-alanine crystals up to >40% when exposed to intermittent microwave heating (up to 20 W power at 8 GHz) in the presence of 20 nm gold nanoparticles up to 120 s. This study demonstrates that the MAMAD technique can be potentially used as an alternative therapeutic method for the treatment of gout by effective decrystallization of large crystals, similar in size to those that often occur in gout.
痛风是由人体尿酸生成过多以及膳食嘌呤代谢效率低下引起的。目前痛风的治疗方法，包括抗炎药、环氧化酶 -2 抑制剂和全身性糖皮质激素，都有有害的副作用。我们的研究实验室最近引入了一种创新方法，即使用金属辅助和微波加速蒸发脱结晶（MAMAD）技术对生物和化学晶体进行脱结晶。在 MAMAD 技术中，微波能量用于加热和激活金纳米颗粒，这些金纳米颗粒就像“纳米子弹”一样，迅速破坏放置在平面上的生物晶体的晶体结构。在本研究中，研究了各种尺寸和成分的晶体，作为不同阶段痛风石痛风的模型（即尿酸作为小晶体（10 - 100μm），l - 丙氨酸作为中等晶体（300μm）和大晶体（~4400μm））。我们的结果表明，在 20nm 金纳米颗粒存在的情况下，当暴露于间歇微波加热（8GHz 频率下功率高达 20W）长达 120 秒时，使用 MAMAD 技术可使尿酸和 l - 丙氨酸晶体的尺寸和数量减少高达 >40%。这项研究表明，MAMAD 技术通过有效使尺寸与痛风中常见的大晶体相似的大晶体脱结晶，有可能作为治疗痛风的替代治疗方法。
