Toxicologic effects of gold nanoparticles in vivo by different administration routes

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles have potential applications in biomedicine, but one of the important concerns is about their safety. Most toxicology data are derived from in vitro studies and may not reflect in vivo responses. Here, an animal toxicity study of 13.5 nm gold nanoparticles in mice is presented. Animal survival, weight, hematology, morphology, and organ index are characterized at different concentrations (137.5-2200 µg/kg) over 14-28 days. The results show that low concentrations of gold nanoparticles do not cause an obvious decrease in body weight or appreciable toxicity, even after their breakdown in vivo. High concentrations of gold nanoparticles induced decreases in body weight, red blood cells, and hematocrit. It was also found that gold nanoparticles administered orally caused significant decreases in body weight, spleen index, and red blood cells. Of the three administration routes, the oral and intraperitoneal routes showed the highest toxicity, and the tail vein injection showed the lowest toxicity. Combining the results of all of these studies, we suggest that targeted gold nanopartices by tail vein injection may be suitable for enhancement of radiotherapy, photothermal therapy, and related medical diagnostic procedures.

Sex selection of sperm in farm animals: status report and developmental prospects

“…As it would be almost impossible to run a flow cytometer under such conditions, a reversible, chemical inhibition of motility could be an alternative. Sodium fluoride (NaF) at low concentrations is able to reversibly stop the movement of spermatozoa (Zakrzewska & Udala 2006) as it inhibits the activity of critical enzymes for ATP generation, such as alkaline phosphatases, ATPase, endolases and dehydrogenases (Chinoy et al 1991, Zakrzewska et al 2002, Liu et al 2008, Sun et al 2010. These enzymes play an important role in glycolysis, cell respiration, metabolism and protein syntheses and thereby are essential for sperm motility (Sun et al 2010).…”

Effect of oral administration of commercial gold nanocolloid on peripheral blood leukocytes in mice

“…Macrophage stimulation can contribute to the development of a systemic immune response, but before they reach target organs, AuNPs enter the bloodstream, where they can react with blood cells (Hillyer et al 2001, Sadauskas et al 2007, Sonavane et al 2008, Balasubramanian et al 2010, Lasagna-Reeves et al 2010, Arnida et al 2011, Hirn et al 2011, Thakor et al 2011, Chen et al 2013. Having administered AuNPs to mice p.o., Zhang et al (2010) observed a decrease in the erythrocyte count as well as the presence of nanoparticles on the surface of cellular membranes and in vesicles inside blood and marrow cells. Also, after intravenous application, gold nanoparticles have been detected in the cellular fraction of the peripheral blood of rats and in the bone marrow of mice (Arnida et al 2011, Hirn et al 2011.…”

“…The higher reactivity of nanoparticles than bulk gold can be a cause of increased ROS (reactive oxygen species) formation inside cells and oxidative stress development, especially in phagocytes, which are particularly predisposed to remove foreign particles from an organism (Brown et al 2008, Yen et al 2009, Lasagna-Reeves et al 2010, Zhang et al 2010, Thakor et al 2011, Gerber et al 2013, Chueh et al 2014.…”

Enhanced Radiation Therapy of Gold Nanoparticles in Liver Cancer

“…In previous work, we investigated the in vivo toxicity and biological applications of GNPs and MoS2 dots in detail [6,30,[47][48][49][50][51]. In this study, we will present the therapeutic effect of PEG-coated GNPs using human hepG2 and mouse H22 hepatocellular carcinoma cell line.…”