Combination effect of nanoparticles on the acute pulmonary inflammogenic potential: additive effect and antagonistic effect

Seonghan Lee, Dong Keun Lee, Soyeon Jeon, Sung Hyun Kim, Jiyoung Jeong, Jong Sung Kim, Jong Hyun Cho, Hyuntae Park, Wan Seob Cho

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The combination effect of co-exposed different types of nanomaterials is little known although humans are generally exposed to a mixture of nanomaterials from urban ultrafine particles or industrial nanomaterials. Herein, we evaluated the combined effect of nanoparticles (NPs) using three types of NPs in different inflammogenic categories: carbon black (CB), nickel oxide (NiO), and copper oxide (CuO). A single type of NPs or NPs in combination was intratracheally instilled into the lungs of rats and the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was analyzed at 24 h after instillation to evaluate the acute inflammogenic potential. The percentage of neutrophils in BALF was selected as a toxicity endpoint and the potential for reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, dose–response of the combined effect, sequential treatment of CB and NiO, and uptake of NiO to alveolar macrophages after combined treatment of CB and NiO were evaluated for the mechanism of the combined effect. Co-exposure of CuO and NiO showed an additive effect on the percentage of neutrophils and ROS generation potential, which implies that the physicochemical properties of each NP are not influenced by the other type. While CB exerted an antagonistic effect on the percentage of neutrophils in combined treatment with CuO or NiO. The antagonistic effect of CB was due to the scavenging activity of the ROS generated by the CuO and NiO rather than the competition in cellular uptake to target cells (i.e. alveolar macrophages), which highlight the importance of the combined effect of NPs in the risk assessment.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)276-288
Number of pages13
JournalNanotoxicology
Volume15
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by the BB21+ Project in 2019 and the National Research Foundation of Korea [2018K1A3A1A74065871 and NRF-2019R1A2C1084489], and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety of Korea [19172MFDS221].

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Toxicology

PubMed: MeSH publication types

  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

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