ABSTRACT
The advent of nanotechnology has transformed several industrial and medical technologies. There has been an extensive use of engineered nanoparticle-based products in myriad aspects of daily human use. The airway is one of the primary routes of nanoparticle exposure, and several studies highlight the debilitating effects of acute or chronic nanoparticle exposure. One of the important therapeutic applications of nanoparticles in airway diseases is the targeted delivery of DNA, short interfering RNA, drugs, or peptides to hematopoietic progenitor cells and pulmonary epithelium to control chronic pathophysiology of obstructive and conformational disorders. When the nanoformulation was administered intraperitoneally in an ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic rat model of asthma, a decrease in cytokine levels was observed in comparison to the untreated group, along with suppression of airway hyper-response and inflammatory cell infiltration. Nanoencapsulated antibiotics are promising inhaled formulations for the treatment of bacterial infections of the lung, associated with diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD).
