Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : June 30, 2022 - July 02, 2022
Methylmercury (MeHg) is known to cause the severe neural degeneration in the central and the peripheral nervous system, which is called Minamata disease. Recently, we reported that the hypoalgesia was selectively induced in MeHg-exposed rats, which was recovered time-dependently. In addition, the number of neurons in the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) of MeHg-exposed rats decreased during hypoalgesia, while it also recovered to control levels after behavioral recovery. In this study, we performed immunohistochemistry in order to clarify whether neurogenesis occurred overtime in MeHg-exposed DRGs. MeHg (6.7 mg/kg/day) was orally administered to Wistar rats for 5 days and discontinued for 2 days, and this cycle was done once again. BrdU (100 mg/kg/day) was administered intraperitoneally for 5 days from a week before the fixation. Twenty-eight, 42, 56 and 70 days after the beginning of MeHg exposure, rats were fixed by paraformaldehyde and their DRGs were cryosectioned and processed for immunohistochemistry. The sections were immunostained for neuronal, nuclear markers and BrdU antibodies. Now we are exploring the optimal experimental condition to see the neurogenesis, and hope to show the results in the conference.
