By Andrea Smith, B.Pharm WITS, Consulting Pharmacist at Silverlab Healthcare
We at Silverlab Healthcare read, with much interest, the comprehensive and informative ‘Early COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines: A Practical Approach to Home-based Care for Healthy Families’ document. As an established, 20-year-old South African company, we are continually conducting extensive medical research on our colloidal silver products through accredited South African and EU laboratories and are furthermore working closely with doctors and other health care professionals (who are themselves on the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic). We also passionately advocate for the right to good health for all. To this end, we would like to propose colloidal silver for your kind consideration as an addition to your list of essential products for early at-home treatment of COVID-19.
Silverlab’s Colloidal Silver further complies since it is also a safe, established and patent-free product. Colloidal silver is unique, due in part to its multiple and complex mechanisms of action. This is perhaps best documented in the comprehensive peer-reviewed white paper, ‘The Silver Lining: towards the responsible and limited usage of silver’, which was published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology in 2017 and which substantiates the versatility and multimodal mechanisms of action of ionic and nano-silver.
Some of the key findings include the following:
- ‘Silver is known to react with nucleophilic amino acid residues in proteins, and attach to sulfhydryl, amino, imidazole, phosphate and carboxyl groups.’ (1)
- ‘It causes bacterial cell wall damage and disruption of cytoplasmic membrane leading to leaching of metabolites, interferes with DNA synthesis, denatures proteins and enzymes (dehydrogenases), binds to ribosomes and inhibits protein synthesis, interferes with electron transport system and is involved in the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) (Hatchett and White 1996; Feng et al. 2000).’ (1)
- ‘The primary mode of silver toxicity is its potential to release silver ions.’ (1)
- ‘Irrespective of the form of the silver used, a major characteristic that will affect the microbicidal effect of the silver is the concentration of silver ions released.’ (1)
- ‘The nano form with its large surface area to volume ratio has high potential for release of silver ions (Sotiriou and Pratsinis 2010).’ (1)
- ‘All forms of silver including silver compounds and silver salts have potential to release silver ions.’ (1)
- ‘Even the biocidal effect of elemental silver is due to formation of silver ions at low concentration on its surface.’ (1)
- Nanostructured silver targets the bacterial cell wall and cell membrane which is a protective barrier and serves several functions (Sondi and Salopek-Sondi 2004).’ (1)
- ‘Nanoparticles <10 nm in diameter can bind to bacterial cell wall and cause its perforation leading to rapid increase in cell permeability and ultimately cell death.’ (1)
- ‘Silver ions can also cause the cell membrane to detach from the cell wall – nevertheless, the mechanism of this process has still been unknown (Feng et al. 2000).’ (1)
- ‘Silver can attack the respiratory chain in bacteria and lead to cell death (Sondi and Salopek-Sondi 2004).’ (1)
- ‘Respiration is the critical point in bacterial cell metabolism and is the mechanism of obtaining energy to perform all the energy-demanding life processes.’ (1)
- ‘The creation of free radicals and induction of oxidative stress also contributes towards toxicity of AgNPs/ions (Kim et al. 2007; Cao and Liu 2010; Wong and Liu 2010).’ (1)
- ‘Sustained release of silver ions by AgNPs inside the bacterial cells in an environment with lower pH may create free radicals and induce oxidative stress, thus further enhancing the bactericidal activity (Morones et al. 2005; Song et al. 2006)’ (1)
