Issue 4, 2023

Maternal exposure to polystyrene nanoplastics impacts developmental milestones and brain structure in mouse offspring

Abstract

The presence of microplastics and nanoplastics (NPs) has recently been reported in human blood and tissues, raising concerns about their potential impacts on human health and fetal development. In this study, we investigated the effects of maternal exposure to NPs on the timing of developmental milestones and on brain structure using experimental mice. Healthy, pregnant CD-1 dams were given 106 ng L−1 of 50 nm polystyrene NPs in drinking water throughout gestation and lactation and the postnatal behavior and neuroanatomy of the offspring were studied. We found that NPs exposure resulted in earlier time to eye opening in male offspring but not in females (p = 0.01). 3D high-resolution ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed that offspring exposed to NPs had focal differences compared to controls in multiple brain structures that are involved in motor function, learning and memory, and physiological functions including the motor cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, medulla, and olfactory bulb. Several of these MRI-detectable neuroanatomical changes were dependent on sex. Our study demonstrates that maternal exposure to NPs results in abnormal postnatal brain development in the mouse. Further investigations are needed to determine the mechanisms whereby NPs exposure during fetal development may adversely affect dimensions of brain function in a sex-dependent manner.

Graphical abstract: Maternal exposure to polystyrene nanoplastics impacts developmental milestones and brain structure in mouse offspring

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Sept. 2022
Accepted
14 Febr. 2023
First published
15 Febr. 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2023,2, 622-628

Maternal exposure to polystyrene nanoplastics impacts developmental milestones and brain structure in mouse offspring

N. E. Harvey, G. V. Mercer, D. Stapleton, K. L. Steeves, J. Hanrahan, M. Cui, Z. Aghaei, S. Spring, P. A. Helm, A. J. Simpson, M. J. Simpson, C. K. Macgowan, A. A. Baschat, J. C. Kingdom, J. G. Sled, K. J. Jobst and L. S. Cahill, Environ. Sci.: Adv., 2023, 2, 622 DOI: 10.1039/D2VA00227B

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements