Sound Waves Kill Skin and Prostate Cancer Cells

Anonymous Coward writes "A recent Study in the British Journal of Cancer shows that the use of Quercitin and 20KHz ultrasound for 60 seconds killed skin and prostate cancer cells. 90% of the abnormal cells were dead within 48hrs. Since low frequency ultrasound was previously shown to enhance the skin penetration of topical substances up to 1000 times, it would seem that a topical Quercetin cream with a low frequency ultrasound wand might be just the ticket for those annoying little skin cancers that tend to occur in older geeks who have spent a bit of time in the sun."

Comments

Killing cancer?

[ZaBu911]

Sounds great!

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

geeks who have spent a bit of time in the sun

They exist?

Re:Wow

[(negative video)]

geeks who have spent a bit of time in the sun

They exist?

What is this "sun" of which you speak?

Re:Wow

[Spy der Mann]

They exist?

Depends... do they mean "in the Sun(TM)"?

Full-text of article:

[mendaliv]

Induction of cancer-specific cytotoxicity towards human prostate and skin cells using quercetin and ultrasound (god that's a mouthful)

Re:Text of Article for those who can't get BJC

[Krach42]

Serious dude... paragraphs, are awesome.

Slight problem eh?

[product byproduct]

Too bad the 20 Kelvin*Hertz waves kill skin.

Re:Slight problem eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And since when is 20 kHz 'low frequency'"

Sorry, there wasn't enough room to put Low Frequency Ultrasound
in the title. 20KHz is considered the low end of ultrasound.
Happy?

Re:Slight problem eh?

[qbwiz]

KHz is Kelvin-Hertz. kHz is kilohertz. Notice the capitalization. It's the same thing as kB versus kb.

Just perfect...

[nemik]

Now I have to choose between keeping my skin or avoiding prostate cancer....

Misleading headline

[TeknoHog]

I didn't even RTFA, but it seems from the summary that the sound itself doesn't kill the cancer cells -- it helps the drug penetrate into the tissue.

Re:Misleading headline

[c_fel]

You're right. It helps the drug penetrate the body. And I tried it. I smoked my pot while listening a low frequency ultrasound and I felt 90% stoner !

Where?

[triso]

"A recent Study in the British Journal of Cancer shows that the use of Quercitin and 20KHz ultrasound for 60 seconds killed skin and prostate cancer cells....

So, where do you rub the Quercitin cream and place the ultrasound probe to kill prostate cancer cells?

Re:Where?

[Bing Tsher E]

It rubs the cream upon it's skin. Or else it gets the probe again.

Picky, picky.

[twitter]

There's not much to read besides abstracts and that's too bad. One of the abstracts said it well:

Pretreatment of cells with ultrasound (20 kHz, 2 W cm(-2), 60 s) selectively induced cytotoxicity in skin and prostate cancer cells, while having minimal effect on corresponding normal cell lines.

Selective toxicity is what cancer treatment is all about, so while the sound man not "kill" cancer, it's a promising treatment.

It would be nice to see the actual studies. I'd like to see the statistics, and see if any other methods were tried and the researcher's reasoning. It may be that dysplastic cells are susceptible to sonic damage and this might work with other therapy methods, such as xray or heat. I'd also like to know how they treated prostate cancer, which is the number two cancer killer of men in the US.

Marketer's dream

[itwerx]

just the ticket for those annoying little skin cancers that tend to occur in older geeks who have spent a bit of time in the sun.

Oh yeah, and we all know that's a billion-dollar market just waiting be tapped! :)

Yes Comrade!

[Stonent1]

In Soviet Britain, you kill cancer!

Ouch!

[Jugalator]

I for one... am not entirely sure I welcome our new sound/vibration emitting anal probe developing overlords. :-/