Effect of silver nanoparticles on maturation of rabbit’s oocytes co-cultured with granulosa cells in vitro

Silver nanoparticles are widely used in different fields of medicine despite the lack of information on their influence on animal’s reproductive system, mammalian gametes and embryos. We investigated the effect of different concentrations of silver nanoparticles (0, 0.01, 0.1, 1 and 10 ?g/mL) on maturation of rabbit’s oocytes co-culture with granulosa cells in vitro. For this purpose, we synthesized small (11.28±0.32 nm) sphe?rical silver nanoparticles with different composite agents: polyvinylpyrrolidone and bovine serum albumin. Our results have shown that silver nanoparticles at the concentration of 10 ?g/ml inhibited granulosa cells proliferation, but did not influence the oocytes maturation to metaphase-2. The loss of granulosa cells viability was confirmed by the release of calcium and lactate dehydrogenase in the culture medium. Analysis of the data showed that silver nanoparticles in concentration of 0?10 ?g/mL did not influence on progesterone and cholesterol concentration in culture medium. We have hypothesized that less toxic effect of silver nanoparticles on oocytes is caused by the presence of zona pellucida with different mechanisms of cellular uptake.