Nano-titanium nitride causes developmental toxicity in zebrafish through oxidative stress

Abstract

Nano-titanium nitride (Nano-TiN) has strong resistance to wear and corrosion, good biocompatibility, and an attractive metallic luster. Nano-TiN is widely used in medical devices, such as orthopedic implants, syringe needles, coronary stents, and long-term dental implants, and also in imitation gold jewelry. Despite its widespread use, there are few reports describing safety evaluations of Nano-TiN. Here, we exposed healthy zebrafish embryos to different concentrations of Nano-TiN solution for five days, starting at about four hours post fertilization, and found that Nano-TiN caused dose- and time-dependent developmental toxicity. With increasing Nano-TiN concentration and length of exposure, mortality, and deformities gradually increased; body length shortened and hatching rate and motility were significantly reduced. We also found that exposure to Nano-TiN affected development of the heart, liver, nerves, and other organs, and led to elevated levels of reactive oxygen species and reduced antioxidant capacity. Exposure to Nano-TiN resulted in downregulation of expression of antioxidant genes, such as nrf2, gclc, gclm, ho-1, and nqo1. Our results showed that exposure to Nano-TiN caused developmental and organ toxicity in zebrafish embryos and that the toxic effects may be mediated through oxidative stress.

Keywords:

• Nano-titanium nitride
• Danio rerio
• development
• oxidative stress
• Nrf2

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by International Science and Technology Cooperation project of Shandong Academy of Sciences [Award number: 2019GHPY13]; Science, Education and Industry Integration Innovation Pilot Project of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) (2020KJC-ZD10); National Key R&D Program of China [Award number: 2018YFC1707300], and Mount Taishan Scholar Program [Award number: tspd20181211]