Vet World   Vol.10   September-2017  Article-1

Acute toxicity of commercial atrazine in Piaractus mesopotamicus: Histopathological, ultrastructural, molecular, and genotoxic evaluation

Background and Aim: The aim of this work was to evaluate the sensitivity of Pacu fingerlings (Piaractus mesopotamicus) by measuring the effects of median lethal concentration (LC50) of atrazine (ATZ - 28.58 mg/L) after acute exposure (up to 96 h).

Materials and Methods: The fish were exposed to the LC50 of ATZ for 96 h (28.58 mg/L) in a static system. During the experiment, the fingerlings were randomly distributed in four glass tanks (50 L) containing dechlorinated water. Four glass tanks were for the control group, and four were for the ATZ-exposed group (n=4 per glass tank), given a total number of 16 animals tested per group. The genotoxicity was evaluated by micronucleus (MN) test in erythrocytes from peripheral blood. Qualitative and semi-quantitative histopathological analyses, and also ultrastructural study, were applied in liver and kidney samples. Finally, the content of heat shock protein (Hsp70) in the liver was evaluated by the western blotting method.

Results: The morphological alterations in the liver, which was associated with increased expression of Hsp70, included nuclear and cytoplasmic vacuolization, cytoplasmic hyaline inclusions, and necrosis. The kidney presented edema and tubular cell degeneration with cytoplasmic hyaline inclusion. The semi-quantitative histopathological analyses indicated that the liver was more sensitive than kidney to ATZ-induced damage. Ultrastructural analysis showed that ATZ caused membrane alterations in several organelles and increased the number of lysosomes in hepatocytes and kidney proximal tubular cells. Nevertheless, no significant difference was observed in MN frequency in erythrocytes comparing treated and control groups.

Conclusion: These results indicated that ATZ-induced damage to the kidney and liver function, ATZ at the concentration tested did not induce a significant difference in MN frequency in Pacu erythrocytes comparing treated and control groups, and also that Pacu fingerlings may be a good bioindicator for testing freshwater contamination. Keywords: Brazilian ichthyofauna, kidney lesions, liver lesions, micronucleus test, oxidative stress.

Keywords: Brazilian ichthyofauna, kidney lesions, liver lesions, micronucleus test, oxidative stress.

How to cite this article: de Paiva PP, Delcorso MC, Matheus VA, de Queiroz SCN, Collares-Buzato CB, Arana S (2017) Acute toxicity of commercial atrazine in Piaractus mesopotamicus: Histopathological, ultrastructural, molecular, and genotoxic evaluation, Veterinary World, 10(9): 1008-1019.

Received: 07-02-2017  Accepted: 01-08-2017     Published online: 01-09-2017

Corresponding author: Sarah Arana   E-mail: aranauni@gmail.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2017.1008-1019

Copyright: de Paiva, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.