A Case for the Role of Copper Deficiency in "Mad-Cow" Disease and Human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
There is also a cancer connection. Thus angiogenesis - the formation of new blood vessels - is copper dependent, and blood vessels are required for tumour growth High concentrations of caeruloplasmin are a source of the copper ions found at the apicial cone of newly forming blood vessels. There is an increase in the serum levels of caeruloplasmin in patients with various types of tumour.
During spin trapping experiments with ichaemic blood samples (generated from volunteers by forearm cuffing, we observed some unusual signals which were eventually tracked down to copper, and which it now seems fairly certain come from decomposition of the blood caeruloplasmin during the trapping experiment. These observations led to our interest in the copper chameleon! The same observation was also made by Japanese workers, also working with human caeruloplasmin, but the effect was not observed with other forms of mammalian ceruloplasmin.