Abstract
The use of engineered nanoparticles in food and pharmaceuticals is expected to increase, but the impact of chronic oral exposure to nanoparticles on human health remains unknown. Here, we show that chronic and acute oral exposure to polystyrene nanoparticles can influence iron uptake and iron transport in an in vitro model of the intestinal epithelium and an in vivo chicken intestinal loop model. Intestinal cells that are exposed to high doses of nanoparticles showed increased iron transport due to nanoparticle disruption of the cell membrane. Chickens acutely exposed to carboxylated particles (50 nm in diameter) had a lower iron absorption than unexposed or chronically exposed birds. Chronic exposure caused remodelling of the intestinal villi, which increased the surface area available for iron absorption. The agreement between the in vitro and in vivo results suggests that our in vitro intestinal epithelium model is potentially useful for toxicology studies.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation for the Nanobiotechnology Center at Cornell University (ECS-9876771), the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (for a Distinguished Professorship for M.L.S.), the Army Corp of Engineers (ID W9132T-07-2-0010) and the US Department of Agriculture. The HT29-MTX cell line was kindly contributed by Thécla Lesuffleur (INSERM U560).
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G.J.M., M.B.E., S.D.A., R.P.G. and M.L.S. conceived and designed the experiments. G.J.M. performed the in vitro studies. G.J.M., M.B.E. and E.T. handled the chickens daily and E.T. and R.P.G. performed the chicken surgery. E.T. performed the microbiological analysis and M.B.E. prepared the histological samples. T.L.S. analysed the histology samples. G.J.M., M.B.E. and E.T. analysed the data. All authors co-wrote the paper.
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Mahler, G., Esch, M., Tako, E. et al. Oral exposure to polystyrene nanoparticles affects iron absorption. Nature Nanotech 7, 264–271 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.3
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