Advanced treatment for chronic diseases
Nanotechnology is one of the relatively new scientific branches in medicine, and the implementation of developments in this field allows to radically change the approach to chronic disease treatment, such as diabetes, Alzheimer, and many others.
Nanomedicine is a science that incorporates the development of nanotechnology (materials with sizes from 1 to 300 nm) into medicine to solve modern medicine’s problems and create new treatments. The issue of health will always be relevant. The era of intelligent solutions has arrived, allowing us to solve medical problems with minimal consequences or simplify the solution to these problems.
The creation of materials that will allow controlled and directed action on the human body, working in it only when and where needed, switching it on and off and delivering the necessary dose of the drug – all this can be called the tasks of nanomedicine.
Diabetes treatment
Different scientists said that nanotechnology can become the basis of a revolutionary method of diabetes treatment. They have developed nanoparticles that can constantly monitor the sugar level in the blood of a person with diabetes and respond by producing insulin.
The injected nanoparticles will replace the function of the pancreatic islet cells in the patient and secrete the appropriate amount of insulin. Thus, the sugar level in the blood will be balanced, and the life quality of patients with type 1 diabetes will improve significantly. The new system will allow the amount of insulin to be released according to the needs of the body.
Alzheimer’s disease treatment
Under the “mask” of senile dementia, an insidious pathology often hides – Alzheimer’s disease. It consists of the progressive loss of neurons in the brain, which is why it usually begins with a decrease in memory, and deterioration of orientation in space. In recent years, scientists have made a breakthrough in treating the disease which causes disability among the elderly. Perhaps Alzheimer’s disease will soon pass from the category of incurable to ordinary pathology.
Alzheimer’s disease treatment is challenging, in large part because its causes are not precisely established. However, several new methods of influencing nerve cells have been developed, which will slow down the course of the disease and even improve the patient’s quality of life. One of them is nanotechnology. It is possible to call nanomedicines the key to winning the “battle” with Alzheimer’s disease. Created with the help of nanotechnology, tiny particles of a particular shape and size can capture cytotoxic proteins that form plaques during the development of the disease.
Nanoparticles have long been studied as ways of protecting cells from toxic peptides that play a leading role in the formation of Alzheimer’s disease.
The ability of these substances to imitate the biological functions of the body, as well as to easily penetrate through the blood-brain barrier, causes them to stop the growth of plaques that block neurons. Moreover, they do it more effectively than drugs: one nanoparticle can “neutralize” about a hundred amyloid peptides. Thus, nanoparticles receive special attention since they open the way to a new approach in the advanced treatment of Alzheimer’s disease in the near future.