Distribution of gold nanoparticles into the brain: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Open accessAbstract
Despite the widespread use of gold nanoparticles (GNPs), there is no consensus on their distribution to different tissues and organs. The present systematic review and meta-analysis addresses the accumulation of GNPs in brain tissue. Extensive searches were conducted in electronic databases, Medline, Web of Science, EMBASE, and Scopus. Based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, primary and secondary screening was performed. The value of brain accumulation of gold nanoparticle (the percentage of the injection dose of GNPs/gram of brain tissue that applied as effect size (ES) in analysis) and the standard error of the mean were extracted from articles and analyzed by calculating the pooled ES and the pooled confidence interval (CI) using STATA software. p ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Thirty-eight studies were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed that the amount of GNPs was 0.06% of the injection dose/gram of brain tissue (ES = 0.06, %95 CI: 0.06–0.06, p < 0.0001). Considering the time between injection and tissue harvest (follow-up time), after 1 h the GNPs in brain tissue was 0.288% of the injection dose/gram of tissue (ES = 0.29, 95% CI: 0.25–0.33, p < 0.0001), while after four weeks it was only 0.02% (ES = 0.02, 95% CI: 0.01–0.03, p < 0.0001) of the injection dose/gram of tissue. The amount of GNPs in brain tissue was higher for PEG-coated GNPs compared to uncoated GNPs, and it was 5.6 times higher for rod-shaped GNPs compared to spherical GNPs. The mean amount of GNPs in the brain tissues of animals bearing a tumor was 5.8 times higher than in normal animals.
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Gold nanoparticles smaller than 10 nm after intravenous injection were observed distributed in the brain slice.
“Although only smaller size (<10 nm) gold nanoparticles after intravenous injection was observed to be distributed in the brain slice.”
From The blood–brain barrier: Structure, regulation and drug delivery (2023) · cites this paper as [285]
Cites
Saraiva, C., Praça, C., Ferreira, R., Santos, T., Ferreira, L., & Bernardino, L. (2016) · Journal of Controlled Release · doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2016.05.044 · Cited by 1,609 · see citing works
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The blood–brain barrier: Structure, regulation and drug delivery
Wu, D., Chen, Q., Chen, X., Han, F., Chen, Z., & Wang, Y. (2023) · Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy · doi:10.1038/s41392-023-01481-w · Cited by 1,906 · see citing works
“Although only smaller size (<10 nm) gold nanoparticles after intravenous injection was observed to be distributed in the brain slice.(285) Sub-100-nm gold nanoparticles can extravasate through the damaged BBB under some pathological circumstance such as brain tumor, cerebral stroke, brain injury and epilepsy.”
BackgroundNájera-Maldonado, L., Parra-González, M., Peralta-Cuevas, E., Gutierrez-Onofre, A. J., Garcia-Atutxa, I., & Villanueva-Flores, F. (2025) · Pharmaceutics · doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics17091169 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
- Authors
- Behroozi, Z., Rahimi, B., Kookli, K., Safari, M. S., Hamblin, M. R., Razmgir, M., Janzadeh, A., & Ramezani, F.
- Affiliations
- Iran University of Medical Sciences (IR)
- Islamic Azad University, Tehran (IR)
- University of Johannesburg (ZA)
- Corresponding author
- Janzadeh, Atousa
- Ramezani, Fatemeh
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nanotoxicology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-09-14
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1059-1072
- ISSN
- 1743-5390 (ISSN-L)
- 1743-5404
- OpenAlex
- W3203924806
- Cited by
- 19
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4
- FWCI
- 0.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- figshare.com
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Nanotoxicology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Figshare (cc-by)
- Funders
- IRAN University of Medical Sciences (98-1-75-14959)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Biomaterials › Nanoparticle-Based Drug Delivery
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials › Gold and Silver Nanoparticles Synthesis and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Nanoparticles: synthesis and applications
- Keywords
- gold nanoparticles, brain accumulation, nanoparticle biodistribution, PEG-coated nanoparticles, rod-shaped nanoparticles, spherical nanoparticles, tumor-bearing animals
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Brain, Gold, Neoplasms, Particle Size, Metal Nanoparticles
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