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Lipidomic analysis of single and combined effects of polyethylene microplastics and polychlorinated biphenyls on human hepatoma cells
Summary
Researchers used lipidomic analysis to study the single and combined effects of polyethylene microplastics and polychlorinated biphenyls on human liver cancer cells. While microplastics alone did not cause significant cell death, the combined exposure with PCBs produced distinct changes in cellular lipid profiles that differed from individual exposures. The study suggests that microplastics may alter how cells respond to co-occurring chemical pollutants through a "Trojan Horse" transport mechanism.
Microplastics are an emerging environmental issue as a result of their ubiquity, persistence, and intrinsic toxic potential. In addition, their ability to sorb and transport a wide variety of environmental pollutants (i.e. "Trojan Horse" effect) exerts significant adverse impacts upon ecosystems. The toxicological evaluation of the single and combined effects produced by polyethylene microplastics and two polychlorinated biphenyl congeners was performed on the human hepatoma cell line HepG2 by cell viability assessment and an untargeted lipidomic study. The cell lethality evaluation evinced that MPs did not induce relevant cell lethality at any of the concentration range tested, while both PCBs presented a hormetic behavior. The lipidomic analysis suggested that both single PCB exposures induced significant lipidomic changes, especially for glycerophospholipids and glycerolipids. In contrast, for MPs single exposure, the most remarkable change was the substantial enhancement of triglyceride content. Regarding combined exposures, results showed that MPs could induce even more harmful effects than those produced intrinsically as a result of desorbing previously sorbed toxic pollutants. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the toxicity of microplastics and their possible "Trojan Horse" effect by applying an untargeted lipidomic methodology.