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Unmodified Polystyrene Nanoparticles Induce Inflammatory and Oxidative Stress Responses in Human Lung Epithelial Cells
Summary
Exposure of human lung epithelial cells to unmodified polystyrene nanoparticles (60 nm) at concentrations as low as 50 µg/mL reduced cell viability by about 50% and triggered expression of inflammatory genes including IL-6 and CXCL10. These results suggest that nanoplastic particles reaching the respiratory tract could provoke lung inflammation, raising concerns about the health consequences of inhaling airborne nanoplastics.
Polystyrene (PS) is one of the commercially used polymers considered as a pollutant in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. Moreover, PS-NPs are used in nanosensors and nanocarrier for the drug. Thus, it is crucial to determine the potential toxicological effect of PS-NPs to cells. Here we used varying concentrations of unmodified PS-NPs of 60±12 nm in size and analyzed their cyto-toxic effect and stress and toxicity gene expressions in NCI-H292 cells. NCI-H292 cells were ex-posed to minimum of 5 µg/mL and maximum of 50 µg/mL of PS-NPs; 50 µg/mL of PS-NPs showed about 50% cell viability. Moreover, unmodified PS-NPs and induce expressions of stress-related genes, such as those encoding interleukin 6 (IL 6), colony-stimulating factor 2 (CSF 2), C-X-C motif chemokine 10 (CXCL 10) responsible for inflammation and heme oxygenase 1 (HMOX 1) responsible for oxidative stress in NCI-H292 cell lines. Our findings suggest that PS-NPs are considered as a potential toxicological compound to the human cell line.
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