Colloidal Silver: A Universal Germ Conqueror

Commentary written on the attributes and advantages of a 10 ppm or a 23 ppm pure silver and water formulation, professional grade, pyrogen-free & sterile (23 ppm), with average particle size of 0.0008 microns, and a thermodynamic Particle Diffusion Coefficient of 10^-5 cm²/second

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Colloidal Silver - Historical & Germane Perspectives On Efficacy

Silver has been used in a variety of crude ways since ancient times to control infections and spoilage. In fact, for centuries silver was regarded as a premier antimicrobial tool. In 69 B.C. silver nitrate was elucidated in the contemporary pharmacopoeia¹.

Recently, new scientific evidence suggests that certain germs can overcome silver's lethal effects. While this may be true under special circumstances, such as bacteria having adapted to silver-rich soils, or a silver colloid or solution used or made improperly, it is not true when considering a product with ideal particle attributes where a correct dosage is applied; it is not true for a medicinal silver. Right up to the present time, microbial resistance to medicinal silver has not been scientifically established.

In fact, some antibiotics which fail to tame resistant germs actually regain their effectiveness when used together with select silver ions. Let's take a closer look.

Several studies indicated that some bacterial species have physiological mechanisms that circumnavigate silver's toxicity. ^2,3,4,5 It is more probable than not that microbes lack sufficient defense mechanisms to circumvent the toxic effects of silver ions. In fact, the "apparent" resistance of microbes to silver appears to be an inadequate protocol or procedure. Reports that select microbes immune to the most powerful antibiotic strategies (i.e., MRSA, Acinetobacter spp., etc.) were resistant to silver proved erroneous. Grier stated that, "Some so-called Ag+ resistant microorganisms may result from an apparent neutralization of the metal's inhibitory action or other assay artifacts. These include the presence of chelators such as serial amino acids, constituents of hard water, different buffers, light, incubation temperature, and particularly, soluble components of trypticase soy agar (TSA) and tryptose glucose extract agar (TGE)."⁷

However, sufficient defense capacity to mitigate morbidity clearly exists in higher organisms including humans (with the exception of medically benign argyria)⁸. Zhao and Stevens state that, "With the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, silver is re-emerging as a modern medicine because all pathogenic organisms have failed to develop an immunity to it { silver ion }."⁹

During the last century, various advances in pharmacological manufacturing methods sought to harness this time-valued strategy. As a result, over 96 different silver formulations were in use prior to 1939, as documented by The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association¹⁰, many of which were used intravenously.^11,12

With the advent of antibiotic therapy, medicinal silver products fell largely into disuse, with the notable exceptions of topical silver salves and neonatal eye drop preparations. These salves advanced the science of silver ion delivery and effectiveness over the early 1900 era.¹³ Then during the mid 1970's, several papers were published that utilized electrically activated silver probes as delivery systems for targeted silver ion strategies¹⁴. The interest in such strategies continues to grow to the present, with high efficacy being obtained for viral vectors such as HIV¹⁵, and resistant bone and dental infection¹⁶.

In Vitro Studies

The early medical literature of the last century, regarding silver, teaches a most important lesson from the past. It portrays the scientific mind's temptation to settle for equivocal knowledge and even misapplied context about medicinal silver, as opposed to definitive knowledge used in correct context with proper discernment concerning the applications of medicinal silver.

Clinical reports began to flood into the various medical journals worldwide on silver formulations at the very start of the last century. At first, the Journal of the American Medical Association took a negative position on silver formulations.¹⁷ Merely eleven years later, a true revolution in medical practice occurred with silver formulations that didn't recede until the U.S. government's purchase of the patent rights to penicillin (circa 1942). Throughout this time period (1920 through 1942) JAMA articles were replete with oral and intravenous clinical reports of the efficacy and side effects of silver formulations^.18 On the other side of the Atlantic, the medical journals The Lancet as well as the British Medical Journal preceded and figured prominently in this trend.^19,20

Perhaps the first definitive attempt to comprehensively evaluate the efficacy and variety of silver formulations was published by the Department of Pharmacology of the Medical School of Western Reserve University, Cleveland, circa 1923. This landmark study arguably established "silver nitrate" as the benchmark, in terms of efficacy, for all silver formulations.²¹ This excitement as a superior antimicrobial tool simultaneously placed onto the horizon the likelihood that subgroups of patients would suffer from symptoms of argyria. Had the technology existed to render "pure silver and water only" colloidal silver products more potent than silver nitrate, this could have been avoided. "Pure silver and water only" colloidal silver products achieve their efficacy with several orders of magnitude less in silver quantity content. Put another way, technology today can render less silver more potent than ever historically possible. The result is a dramatic elongation of the Therapeutic Index, resulting in unprecedented safety, efficacy and dimension to protocol parameters.

For example, researchers at the University of Wisconsin were under contract from NASA to determine the biocidal effects of silver. They determined, beginning in 1970, that lethal effects of silver ions could be reliably reproduced at concentrations of only 250 ppb when exposed to infectious agents over 2 hours or less in vitro, or even of only 50 ppb over 4 hours or less.²² Although these extinction times were long, the laboratory-produced silver ions worked marvelously. For the next several decades, follow-on studies of silver formulations by many investigators failed in many ways to exert lethal effects upon antibiotic resistant infectious organisms as previously noted. Then, as technology advanced, these highly resistant organisms were again found to succumb to the lethal effects of these cutting edge silver formulations.²³ Additionally, the extinction times dramatically lessened to mere minutes as compared previously to hours²⁴.

In Vivo Studies

Globally, a fair estimate of humans given oral and intravenous silver formulations probably exceeded 7 digits during the height of its popularity (i.e., from 1900 and beyond 1940). Thus, an unrecorded event of enormous scale took place defining and confirming the use of silver formulations as effective anti-microbials. For example, one pharmaceutical company was able to capture a $10,000,000.00 per annum marketplace for its solo silver medicinal. In today's equivalent, this would exceed ten times that market share just accounting for North America alone.

Presently, in vivo studies concerning the efficacy of oral and intravenous use of next-generation silver formulations is just beginning. With these high tech formulated silver formulations, this promises to be an exciting time. For the inferior grade silver formulations, history is apt to repeat itself for one needless iatrogenic event: such products in a few years will gestate a new saga of preventable argyric cases. The intent of this preliminary pilot study is twofold: (1) to help obviate this predilection of inferior silver formulations by helping to establish both safe standards and efficacy, as well as (2) to set in motion a future set of compelling and irrefutable investigational designs.

One fascinating in vivo study reported in the Journal of Clinical Ultrasound (2000) reported on a protocol involving puncture, aspiration, injection and reaspiration (PAIR) with silver nitrate directly into hepatic hydatid cysts with beneficial long-term results.²⁵ Other noteworthy early evidence in vivo suggests that HIV,^26,27 other viral vectors such as HCV, and the worst bacterial scourges including some of the most antibiotic resistant disease vectors may become events of the past via the judicious and strategic use of next-generation silver formulations and delivery systems.^{28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35}

Product Description

• This discussion is concerned exclusively with a formulation of silver with the following attributes:
  • Professional grade formulation: Sterile and pyrogen-free
  • Highly stable shelf-life
  • Simple colloidal solution containing purest silver and ultra-pure water only
  • Extremely fine silver particle dispersion confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
  • A concentration of 23 ppm, suitable for medical administration
  • An average particle size of 8 angstroms (0.0008 microns)
  • A Particle Diffusion Coefficient approaching 10^-5 cm²/second
  • A particle surface area (thermodynamically active sites) approaching 6 square kilometers per original cubic cm of raw silver material
  • Suitable concentration and attributes to advantageously elongate the Therapeutic Index for silver in humans (i.e., the gap between the threshold of human toxicity vs. the threshold for pathogen extinction)
  • Hypo-osmotic solution highly efficacious allowing low quantity us

Optimizing Silver Particle Size

• Pure silver formulated into colloidal silver aggregates express zeta potential. Colloidal silver aggregates can accumulate zeta potential, making the end product more highly charged than a single ion of silver.
• Zeta potential has the characteristic of an ion, but the charge can be more dynamic than a simple ion.
• The stable zeta rich colloidal silver particles retain extremely small sizes when manufactured properly.
• This product shelf-stability may then best enter into a biological environment. The cellular membranes of both human tissue as well as pathogens have pores that allow for simple diffusion of such small particle sizes. We shall see that silver ions do indeed readily combine with pathogen membranes as well as penetrate deep into the pathogen to accomplish a variety of strategic microcidal actions.
• Additionally, a pure silver and water product (i.e., a product which does not contain silver salts), is not only considered non-toxic, but also possesses the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals, while possessing the least contact resistance.³⁹ In other words, pure silver ions, at colloidal particle size, exhibit potent thermodynamic energy signatures that in turn apply to silver's therapeusis.
• It is the various silver salts that express toxicity, and not colloidal silver. Taken together, these facts may be of utmost importance to the human body's strategic use of silver with the plethora of endogenous ROTS ( Radical Oxygen Toxic Species ) and antioxidant pathways. In other words, if silver intervenes with pathogens as an ion associated within WBC generated ROTS, the thermodynamic attributes of the ROTS may enhance immune efficacy that utilize ROTS to autolyse pathogens, such as: OCl^-, the peroxide cascade, NO, superoxide radical, etc. On the other side of the equation, mammalian tissue contains antioxidants that tame such ROTS, such as cysteine, selenium, glutathione, vitamin E, etc.
• And finally we must consider what happens after our inherent tissues' antioxidants reversibly quench silver. At the starting point, a pure silver ion or colloidal silver aggregate with zeta potential binds into pathogens or tissue by losing its charge. In cases where human WBC antioxidant levels are adequate, the deceased pathogen may be phagocytized by a megakaryocyte. Within the immune cell, this process may be reversible when certain antioxidants are present such as glutathione, selenium or N^--acetylcysteine.⁴⁰ This allows for a potential recycling of the metallic silver particle back into a silver ion, which in turn can thrust another available silver ion at a prospective pathogen, perhaps freed by the immune cell upon respiratory burst, or by integrating within its strategic intracellular ROTS cascade autolysing phagocytized pathogens. Previous work done with silver sulfadiazine showed it did not have a significant impact upon neutrophilic respiratory burst at clinical dosage levels.⁴¹ However, the product selected in this study appears to possess at least several orders of magnitude greater potential, due to its smaller particle size and dispersion. Further work needs to verify this theory regarding this product.

Product Silver Ion Concentration:

Conclusion:

References:

JAMA, August 25th, 1923; 81:8.
JAMA, October 17th, 1925; 85:16.
JAMA, August 7th, 1926; 87:6.
JAMA, October 23rd, 1926; 87:17.
JAMA, March 17th, 1928; 90:11.
JAMA, August 4th, 1928; 91:5.
JAMA, November 2nd, 1929; 93:18.
JAMA, May 19th, 1934; 102:20.
JAMA, January 28th, 1939; 112:4.

Simpson, WJ, Hewlett, RT, "Experiments on the Germicidal Action of Colloidal Silver," The Lancet, December 12th, 1914, p. 359.
Sanderson-Wells, TH, "A Case of Puerperal Septicemia Successfully Treated with Intravenous Injections of Collosol Argentum," The Lancet, February 16th, 1916; p. 258.
Fuller, AW, "Epidemic Encephalitis of Severe Type," The Lancet, July 24th, 1926; 2:172.

Marshall, CR, Killoh, GB, "The Bactericidal Action of Collosols of Silver and Mercury," Brit Med J, January 16th, 1915; 1:102-3.
Roe, AL, "Collosol Argentum and its Ophthalmic Uses," Brit Med J, January 16th, 1915; 3:104.
Morris, M, "The Therapeutic Effects of Colloidal Preparations," Brit Med J, May 12th, 1917; 1:617.

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