Authors: JH Lee, M. Gulumian, EM Faustman, T. Workman, K. Jeon , IJ Yu
Source: BionMed Research International 2018
Summary:
Background: Background: To investigate the effect of subacute intravenous administration AgNP (silver nanoparticles, 10 nm) and AuNP (gold nanoparticles, 12.8 nm) and AgNP/AuNP mixture to blood biochemistry, hematology, and platelet coagulation, subacute toxicity study was conducted.
Methods: AuNP and AgNP in which their size distribution was not statistically different, mixed or separate, were injected into the caudal vein of male Sprague-Dawley rats for 4 weeks. The rats were allowed to recover for a further 4 weeks in order to examine systemic toxicity expressed in the blood biochemistry and hematology. The dose groups (5males per group for the administration and 3 males for the recovery) consisted of 7 divisions, i.e., control, AgNP (with a low dose of 10 𝜇g/kg/day and a high dose of 100 𝜇g/kg/day), AuNP (with a low dose of 10 𝜇g/kg/day and a high dose of 100 𝜇g/kg/day), and mixed AgNP/AuNP (with a low dose of 10/10 𝜇g/kg/day and a high dose of 100/100 𝜇g/kg/day).
Results: There were no significant dose-related changes in the hematology and blood biochemical values for the rats. Coagulation time in terms of the active partial thromboplastin time (APTT) and prothrombin time (PT) did not show any significant changes, when compared to the control group.
Conclusion: The subacute injection of AuNP and AgNP or their mixture did not induce any noticeable systemic toxicity.