Gold Nanoparticles Used to Measure Stickiness of Snot

As part of research to provide better treatment for sufferers of lung diseases, a team of scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a new way to measure the stickiness of mucous utilizing gold nanoparticles and light.

The discovery could help doctors more effectively treat lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The team will present their findings at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Optical Society, Oct 19-23 in Tuscon, Arizona.

Amy Oldenburg, a physicist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill said "People who have certain lung diseases have thickened mucus. In healthy adults, hair-like cell appendages called cilia line the airways and pull mucus out of the lungs and into the throat. But if the mucus is too viscous it can become trapped in the lungs, making breathing more difficult and also failing to remove pathogens that can cause chronic infections.”

Traditional treatment for these types of diseases involve the prescription of medication that can thin the mucous, but until now, doctors had no real way to measure the effectiveness of such drugs.

“The ability to monitor how well mucus-thinning treatments are working in real-time may allow us to determine better treatments and tailor them for the individual.” said Oldenburg.

The new process is not expected to be tested on humans for another 5 to 10 years while the safety of the process is researched. Gold is non-toxic, but the scientists want to ensure that the gold nanoparticles would eventually be naturally expelled from the body.