COPPER AND NOBLE METALS IN MEDICINE: APPLICATION, DISEASES AND OCCURRENCE IN THE HUMAN BODY

摘要

Several metals such iron, copper, zinc, cobalt and selenium are very well known in medicine, since most of them are essential for the human body. It is possible to measure, with the appropriate methods, the level of iron and copper in the in the blood, in the serum, in the urine and after puncture of the liver. So it is possible to classify diseases of the iron or copper metabolism and to categorize the several types of anaemia. For example, low and high levels of iron may cause the so called anaemia of deficiency of iron and hemochromatosis, respectively. We exactly know what happens in the blood, in the liver and in the brain when the level of copper in the blood is too high or too low. However, very little is known in the human body about noble metals elements such as Ag, Au and the six platinum group elements (PGE = Os, Ir, Ru, Rh, Pt and Pd) as well as other rare elements.