Interest in and use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) continues to rise, spurring interest into the motivations for CAM use. To understand this trend, numerous investigations have sought to uncover the reasons why health-care consumers choose CAM. The motivations revealed by these studies are suggested to generally fall into two main categories: 1) reasons that highlight the perceived positive aspects of CAM, or “pull factors” and; 2) reasons that focus on the perceived negative aspects of conventional medicine, or “push” factors (Furnham A., Smith C. Choosing alternative medicine). A desire to take a more proactive role in one`s health, and holistic health beliefs are among the more often cited “pull” motivations. Dissatisfaction with aspects of conventional medicine, including unpleasant side effects, ineffective treatment, and aspects of the doctor-patient relationship (Shmueli A, Shuval J, 2006), are common “push” motivations reported by CAM consumers.
In comparison to previous structures, the synthesis of gold/gold-sulfide nanoparticles is far simpler, both in terms of the number of steps required and the number of materials used. Previous methods have required the synthesis of “bare” gold nanoparticles before adding additional reagents to alter their shape or add a coating, etc. This method does not require any “bare” nanoparticles to be created prior to starting. However, although there are fewer steps, there are two points in this method which involve storing the reaction mixture for extended periods of time – first, for 24 hours after combining the chloroauric acid and sodium sulfide, and for another 72 hours after dispersing the solution in 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid.
There are far fewer reactants required for this method in comparison to the two previously mentioned, however with the exception of ethanol, the three main reactants (chloroauric acid, sodium sulfide and 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid) are extremely costly when the highest purity is chosen, and no data was available for cisplatin in order to comment on the total cost
In a variation from the relatively simple nanostructures discussed above, the following method proposed by Wang et al 2008 is one for preparing Fe3O4-polymer-gold shell nanoparticles, which not
only absorb in the near-infrared region, but also display magnetism, which would allow them to be used in MRI, and also to be controlled via a magnetic field to the area of a malignant tumour.10
First, “bare” gold nanoparticles were synthesised from the reduction of gold. This was achieved by mixing 100mL of deionised water with 2mL of 1% by weight sodium citrate solution, and adding this to 1mL of 1% by weight chloroauric acid with stirring. 1mL of 0.1% by weight sodium borohydride solution was then added and the mixture stirred for ten minutes, which allowed the sodium borohydride to reduce the gold. The resulting gold nanoparticles were stored at 4C.25
Following the preparation of gold nanoparticles, magnetite nanoparticles were synthesised for the coating of the gold nanoparticles, according to the method proposed by Li et al, 2005. 1.35 g of 0.005M iron (III) chloride hexahydrate, 40mL of ethylene glycol, 3.6g of sodium acetate and 1g of polyethylene glycol were combined and stirred for half an hour. The solution was then autoclaved at 200C for eight hours before being washed and dried, in preparation for the addition of a polymer coating.26
