Are some people more likely to develop adverse reactions to nanoparticle-based medicines?
The complement system, the human body's first line of defense against blood-borne intruders, is blamed for infusion-related reactions to nanomedicines, but the conventional models used to predict the risk of cardiopulmonary side effects in response to nanopharmaceuticals might not well represent what actually occurs in humans.
S. Moein Moghimi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, questions the validity of pig and sheep models to predict the risk of infusion-related reactions to nanoparticle-based medicines in humans.The author proposes that some individuals may be highly sensitive to nanoparticles due to a particular liver or lung disorder or a predisposition to liver or lung disease. Future studies should compare human lung tissue from patients with and without liver and inflammatory lung disease to explore the role of the complement system in nanopharmaceutical-related infusion reactions. In addition, a more realistic and predictive model for examining the risk of cardiopulmonary side effects associate with nanomedicines may be a rat with cirrhosis of the liver, suggests Dr. Moghimi.
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