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Tier 2
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Original research — experimental, observational, or case-control study. Direct primary evidence.
Human Health Effects
Nanoplastics
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Assessment on interactive prospectives of nanoplastics with plasma proteins and the toxicological impacts of virgin, coronated and environmentally released-nanoplastics
Scientific Reports2019
289 citations
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Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Score: 45
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0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Researchers found that nanoplastics quickly coat themselves in blood proteins, forming a multi-layered "corona" that changes the proteins' shape and makes them biologically harmful; these protein-coated nanoplastics caused more DNA and cell damage in human blood cells than bare nanoplastics. The study highlights the need to regulate nanoplastics in medical products and better understand how they accumulate in the body.
Recently, the concerns about micro- and nano-plastics (NPs) toxicity have been increasing constantly, however the investigations are quiet meager. The present study provides evidences on the toxicological prospectives of virgin-, coronated- and isolated-NPs on human blood cells and Allium cepa root tip, respectively. Several plasma proteins displayed strong affinity towards NPs and produced multi-layered corona of 13 nm to 600 nm size. The coronated-NPs often attracted each other via non-specific protein-protein attraction which subsequently induced protein-induced coalescence in NPs. In the protein point of view, the interaction caused conformational changes and denaturation of protein thereby turned it as bio-incompatible. The coronated-NPs with increased protein confirmation changes caused higher genotoxic and cytotoxic effect in human blood cells than the virgin-NPs. On the other hand, virgin-NPs and the NPs isolated from facial scrubs hindered the root growth and caused chromosome aberration (ring formation, C-mitotic and chromosomal breaks, etc.) in root of Allium cepa. At the outset, the present study highlights the urgent need of scrutinization and regulation of NPs use in medical applications and pre-requisition of additional studies for assessing the bio-accumulation and bio-magnification of NPs.