In vitro toxicological assessment of gadolinium (III) chloride in V79–4 fibroblasts

Background Rare earth minerals of the lanthanide series are widely used in the field of medical and clinical application. Gadolinium (Gd), the most preferred rare earth mineral is frequently used as magnets, superconductors and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent. Increasing production of gadolinium waste, known potent toxicity of this element and lack of information on its Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) prompts health risk assessment on gadolinium. In this study, cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of Gadolinium (III) chloride (GdCl 3 ) were investigated using MTT assay, Alkaline Comet assay and Micronucleus assay, respectively. Results Our results demonstrated that the viability of GdCl 3 treated V79–4 cells was significantly ( p  < 0.05) reduced at 1.0 mM after 24 h of incubation. However, no IC50 values were obtained. GdCl 3 showed no significant ( p  > 0.05) DNA damage both in the presence and absence of metabolic activation. However, it induced significant ( p  < 0.05) clastogenic effect in V79–4 cells at 1.0 mM in the absence of metabolic activation. The clastogenic effect was also seen in the presence of metabolic activation at 0.25 mM, 0.5 mM and 1.0 mM. Conclusion Taken together, our study indicated that GdCl 3 had no cytotoxic effect and does not induce DNA damage. However, this study supports that GdCl 3 is a probable clastogen. Further studies are needed to investigate the effect of free gadolinium ion (Gd 3+ ) for risk assessment on human health.