In vitro toxicological assessment of gadolinium (III) chloride in V79-4 fibroblasts.

BACKGROUND: Rare earth minerals of the lanthanide series are widely used in the field of medical and clinical application. Gadolinium (Gd), the most preferred rare earth mineral is frequently used as magnets, superconductors and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent. Increasing production of gadolinium waste, known potent toxicity of this element and lack of information on its Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) prompts health risk assessment on gadolinium. In this study, cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of Gadolinium (III) chloride (GdCl3) were investigated using MTT assay, Alkaline Comet assay and Micronucleus assay, respectively. RESULTS: Our results demonstrated that the viability of GdCl3 treated V79-4 cells was significantly (p < 0.05) reduced at 1.0 mM after 24 h of incubation. However, no IC50 values were obtained. GdCl3 showed no significant (p > 0.05) DNA damage both in the presence and absence of metabolic activation. However, it induced significant (p < 0.05) clastogenic effect in V79-4 cells at 1.0 mM in the absence of metabolic activation. The clastogenic effect was also seen in the presence of metabolic activation at 0.25 mM, 0.5 mM and 1.0 mM. CONCLUSION: Taken together, our study indicated that GdCl3 had no cytotoxic effect and does not induce DNA damage. However, this study supports that GdCl3 is a probable clastogen. Further studies are needed to investigate the effect of free gadolinium ion (Gd3+) for risk assessment on human health.

Cytoprotection, Genoprotection, and Dermal Exposure Assessment of Chitosan-Based Agronanofungicides.

Health risks which result from exposure to pesticides have sparked awareness among researchers, triggering the idea of developing nanoencapsulation pesticides with the aim to enhance cytoprotection as well as genoprotection of the pesticides. In addition, nanocapsules of pesticides have slow release capability, high bioavailability, and site-specific delivery, which has attracted great interest from researchers. Hence, the objective of this work is to synthesize a nanoformulation of a fungicide of different sizes, namely, chitosan-hexaconazole nanoparticles (18 nm), chitosan-dazomet nanoparticles (7 nm), and chitosan-hexaconazole-dazomet nanoparticles (5 nm), which were then subjected to toxicological evaluations, including cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, cell death assay, and dermal irritation assays. Incubation of chitosan-based nanofungicides with V79-4 hamster lung cell did not reveal cytotoxicity or genotoxicity, potentially suggesting that encapsulation with chitosan reduces direct toxicity of the toxic fungicides. Meanwhile, pure fungicide revealed its high cytotoxic effect on V79-4 hamster lung cells. In addition, dermal exposure assessment on rabbits revealed that chitosan-hexaconazole nanoparticles are classified under corrosive subcategory 1C, while chitosan-dazomet nanoparticles are classified under corrosive subcategory 1B. Moreover, both chitosan-hexaconazole nanoparticles and chitosan-dazomet nanoparticles are classified as causing mild irritation.