Copper Can Destroy Respiratory Viruses
Hospital administrators should take a new look at copper, new research suggests, with proof emerging that the metal can halt the spread of a wide array of diseases.
Long before Pasteur invented the germ hypothesi of cancer, copper, and alloys such as brass, were touted asprotectors against ill health. While many such pre-scientific redress have failed rigorous testing, copper has been demonstrated to be a powerful antibiotic.
Dr Sarah Warnesof the University of Southampton has taken this a step further, uncovering in mBiothat copper can avoid the transfer of lethal respiratory viruses.
Despite the pervasive myththat antibiotics fight viral illness like flu, effectiveness against bacteria normally offer no indication of anti-viral properties. However, Warnes reports that copper kills coronaviruses, a category that includes severe acute respiratory syndrome( SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome( MERS ).
These cancers are often resistant to human-to-human transmission, but can be very long-livedwhen shed by animal hosts, allowing them to be picked up by humans touching surfaces on which they have survived. Pathogenic human coronavirus 229 E remained infectious in a human lung cell culture model following at least fivedays of persistence on a range of common nonbiocidal surface materials, including polytetrafluoroethylene( Teflon; PTFE ), polyvinyl chloride( PVC ), ceramic tiles, glass, silicone rubber, and stainless steel, the paper reports.
However, when Warnes and her co-authors employed copper alloy surfaces, they found the viruses were quickly inactivated so they were no longer effective. Even a low concentrationof copper demonstrated very effective, in the authors’ terms, when mixed with zinc to build brass.
Exposure to copper destroyed the viral genomes and irreversibly affected virus morphology, including disintegration of envelope and dispersal of surface spikes, the paper reports.
The paper explores the reasons for the effects, which it attributes to a combination of copper itself and reactive molecules containing oxygen that are generated on the alloy surface.
Coronavirus 229 E is one of the major causes ofthe common cold, and seldom fatal. However, it is part of the same family as SARS and MERS, which have killed over 1,000 people between them. While researchers naturally prefer to work with a virus that causes colds than its more deadly relatives, they hope their discovery may prove more widely applicable.
A previous newspaperby two of the same authors showed that copper also kills the MNV-1 virus, part of the norovirus household responsible for roughly half of gastroenteritis lawsuits. However, alloys containing over 60 percentcopper were required in that case, higher than for coronavirus 229 E. Where sewage and plumbing is well developedgastroenteritis is generally associated with a day or two hunched over a toilet and some unintended weight loss, but worldwide it kills millions of peoplea year. Since noroviruses and coronaviruses are not closely related, copper’s effectiveness against both suggests its applications may be widespread.
The writers recommend utilizing copper alloy surfaces in places where illness are likely to spread, such as the communal the matter of hospital respiratory illnes wards.
Read more: www.iflscience.com
Copper Can Destroy Respiratory Viruses
Copper Can Destroy Respiratory Viruses
Copper Can Destroy Respiratory Viruses
Copper Can Destroy Respiratory Viruses
Copper Can Destroy Respiratory Viruses