Sadauskas Evaldas, Danscher Gorm, Stoltenberg Meredin, Vogel Ulla, Larsen Agnete, Wallin Håkan
Department of Neurobiology, Institute of Anatomy, University of Aarhus, Aarhus C, Denmark.
Nanomedicine. 2009 Jun;5(2):162-9. doi: 10.1016/j.nano.2008.11.002. Epub 2009 Feb 12.
The present study aims at revealing the fate of 40-nm gold nanoparticles after intravenous injections. The gold nanoparticles were traced histochemically with light and transmission electron microscopy using autometallographic (AMG) staining, and the gold content in the liver was determined with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Gold nanoparticles were identified in almost all Kupffer cells one day after the injection, but the fraction of gold-loaded cells gradually decreased to about one fifth after 6 months. Transmission electron microscopic analysis showed that the gold nanoparticles had accumulated inside the vesicular lysosome/endosome-like structures of the macrophages. At day 1, about 4.5 per thousand of the area of the liver sections was AMG-stained, after 1 month it had decreased to 0.7 per thousand, and thereafter no further significant reduction was recorded. Because ICP-MS only showed a 9% fall in the gold content over the observed 6 months, the AMG finding of a significant reduction in the stained area of the liver sections and number of macrophages loaded with gold nanoparticles reveals that over time an increasing part of the total amount of gold nanoparticles in the liver is contained in fewer macrophages accumulated in growing clusters.
本研究旨在揭示静脉注射后40纳米金纳米颗粒的归宿。采用自动金相（AMG）染色法，通过光学显微镜和透射电子显微镜对金纳米颗粒进行组织化学追踪，并用电感耦合等离子体质谱（ICP-MS）测定肝脏中的金含量。注射后一天，几乎所有库普弗细胞中都能识别出金纳米颗粒，但6个月后，载金细胞的比例逐渐降至约五分之一。透射电子显微镜分析表明，金纳米颗粒积聚在巨噬细胞的囊泡状溶酶体/内体样结构内。第1天，肝脏切片面积约0.45%被AMG染色，1个月后降至0.07%，此后未记录到进一步的显著下降。由于ICP-MS仅显示在观察的6个月内金含量下降了9%，AMG发现肝脏切片染色面积和载有金纳米颗粒的巨噬细胞数量显著减少，这表明随着时间的推移，肝脏中金纳米颗粒总量中越来越大的一部分包含在越来越多聚集在一起的较少巨噬细胞中。
