Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”

A recent publication in “Particle and Fibre Toxicology” reported on the gender differences in pulmonary toxicity from oro-pharyngeal aspiration of a high dose of cellulose nanocrystals. The study is timely given the growing interest in diverse commercial applications of cellulose nanomaterials, and...

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Main Authors: Shatkin, Jo Anne, Oberdörster, Günter
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: BioMed Central 2016
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5096324/
id pubmed-5096324
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-50963242016-11-07 Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals” Shatkin, Jo Anne Oberdörster, Günter Letter to the Editor A recent publication in “Particle and Fibre Toxicology” reported on the gender differences in pulmonary toxicity from oro-pharyngeal aspiration of a high dose of cellulose nanocrystals. The study is timely given the growing interest in diverse commercial applications of cellulose nanomaterials, and the need for studies addressing pulmonary toxicity. The results from this study are interesting and can be strengthened with a discussion of how differences in the weights of female and male C57BL/6 mice was accounted for. Without such a discussion, the observed differences could be partially explained by the lower body weights of females, resulting in higher doses than males when standardized to body weight or lung volume. Further, few conclusions can be drawn about the pulmonary toxicity of cellulose nanocrystals given the study design: examination of a single high dose of cellulose nanocrystals, administered as a bolus, without positive or negative controls or low dose comparisons, and at an unphysiological and high dose rate. Simulating the bolus type delivery by inhalation would require a highly unrealistic exposure concentration in the g/m3 range of extremely short duration. A discussion of these limitations is missing in the paper; further speculative comparisons of cellulose nanocrystals toxicity to asbestos and carbon nanotubes in the abstract are both unwarranted and can be misleading, these materials were neither mentioned in the manuscript, nor evaluated in the study. BioMed Central 2016-11-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5096324/ /pubmed/27814761 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12989-016-0170-4 Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Shatkin, Jo Anne
Oberdörster, Günter
spellingShingle Shatkin, Jo Anne
Oberdörster, Günter
Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
author_facet Shatkin, Jo Anne
Oberdörster, Günter
author_sort Shatkin, Jo Anne
title Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
title_short Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
title_full Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
title_fullStr Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
title_full_unstemmed Comment on Shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
title_sort comment on shvedova et al. (2016), “gender differences in murine pulmonary responses elicited by cellulose nanocrystals”
description A recent publication in “Particle and Fibre Toxicology” reported on the gender differences in pulmonary toxicity from oro-pharyngeal aspiration of a high dose of cellulose nanocrystals. The study is timely given the growing interest in diverse commercial applications of cellulose nanomaterials, and the need for studies addressing pulmonary toxicity. The results from this study are interesting and can be strengthened with a discussion of how differences in the weights of female and male C57BL/6 mice was accounted for. Without such a discussion, the observed differences could be partially explained by the lower body weights of females, resulting in higher doses than males when standardized to body weight or lung volume. Further, few conclusions can be drawn about the pulmonary toxicity of cellulose nanocrystals given the study design: examination of a single high dose of cellulose nanocrystals, administered as a bolus, without positive or negative controls or low dose comparisons, and at an unphysiological and high dose rate. Simulating the bolus type delivery by inhalation would require a highly unrealistic exposure concentration in the g/m3 range of extremely short duration. A discussion of these limitations is missing in the paper; further speculative comparisons of cellulose nanocrystals toxicity to asbestos and carbon nanotubes in the abstract are both unwarranted and can be misleading, these materials were neither mentioned in the manuscript, nor evaluated in the study.
publisher BioMed Central
publishDate 2016
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5096324/
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