The Latent Toxic Effects of Carbon Nanotube Serving as Biomedicine

In order to explore whether the carbon nanotubes (CNT) (20-40 nm) could be used as medicine vehicle in biomedicine, the contents of malondialdehyde (MDA) and glutathione (GSH) in lungs of mice were measured as indicators of latent toxicity in this study. Kunming mice were divided into 7 testing groups (n=5 for each group) - 0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 mg/ml multi-carbon nanotubes (MCNT) suspension injected groups, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 mg/ml carbon black (CB) suspension injected groups and saline injected group. The results showed that after 7 days' exposure MDA contents in different concentrations of MCNT treated groups were much higher than that of saline group and the same concentrations of CB treated groups. As to GSH contents, a decrease was found in all the MCNT injected groups compared with the saline group or the same concentration of CB treated groups. The data suggest that the acute pulmonary oxidative damage could be induced by MCNT, and the toxic effects were much severer than that induced by CB. Therefore, it can be concluded that MCNT is not suitable to be adopted as medicine vehicle directly in biomedicine.