Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS)

The ten publications cited here, from 2018 to 2025, are all laboratory studies, and in most of them PBS is the medium rather than the subject. Two examine PBS directly: how it acidifies on freezing, and how it and osmotic stress reshape phospholipid vesicles. The others use it as a test or comparison medium: ultraviolet inactivation of hepatitis A virus, long-term soaking of decellularised bone, corrosion of magnesium and titanium alloys, washing boar spermatozoa, sampling silver nanoparticles, preparing a dental root-filling material, and modelling drug release against human peritoneal fluid.

The freezing study measured how starting pH, concentration and cooling rate changed the acidity of frozen PBS, and the vesicle study found that PBS, and the way it was added, altered vesicle structure through osmotic stress. Prolonged soaking in PBS changed the collagen fibre network of decellularised bone. Hepatitis A virus was less sensitive to 254 nm UV-C in PBS than in apple juice or coconut water. Cooled PBS washing raised a 32 kDa tyrosine-phosphorylated protein in boar spermatozoa, an effect blocked by a serine protease inhibitor. The corrosion studies measured hydrogen released by corroding magnesium and the recovery of the passive oxide layer on titanium-zirconium alloys. Silver nanoparticle elution and recovery differed between PBS and plasma, and drug release differed between synthetic media and peritoneal fluid, which the authors read as a case for bio-relevant media. Mineral trioxide aggregate mixed with calcium- and magnesium-free PBS strengthened structurally weak human roots against fracture.

None of these studies concerns PBS given to animals or people. They characterise it as a laboratory medium, and several found that it behaves differently from biological fluids such as plasma and peritoneal fluid. Results depend on the formulation, including whether calcium and magnesium are present, and on handling conditions such as temperature and cooling rate, so each finding applies to the conditions its study used.