Neurotoxicity of β-HgS differs from environmental mercury pollutants (MeHgCl and HgCl₂) in Neuro-2a cell

ABSTRACT

β-HgS, differing from environmental mercury pollutants (MeHgCl and HgCl₂) in chemical form, is used as traditional medicine in Asian countries for thousands of years. In this study, Neuro-2a cells were exposed to β-HgS, MeHgCl and HgCl₂ (5 µM) for 6–24 h. The cell viability of β-HgS was higher than MeHgCl with 25.9% and 72.4% in 12 h and 24 h respectively. As the incubation time increased, MeHgCl had obvious damage to cell morphology, decreased the ratio of Bcl-2 and Bak and increased the expressions of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β significantly. Furthermore, the expressions of IL-1β and IL-6 in HgCl₂ group were increased significantly in 6 h and 24 h. The apoptotic rates in MeHgCl and HgCl₂ group were respectively higher than β-HgS with 32.2% and 7.30% in 24 h. Our findings indicate that β-HgS is much less neurotoxicity than MeHgCl and HgCl₂ in Neuro-2a cells.

KEYWORDS:

• Β-HgS
• MeHgCl
• HgCl₂
• neurotoxiciry
• Neuro-2a

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Qien Yang for facilitating our experiment design. The National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1708006), the Key Laboratory Special Development Program of Qinghai Province (2017-ZJ-Y08), the International Partnership Program (153631KYSB20160004) and Central Asian Drug Discovery and Development Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAM201806) supported this work.

Disclosure statement

Authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1708006), the Key Laboratory Special Development Program of Qinghai Province (2017-ZJ-Y08); the International Partnership Program (153631KYSB20160004); Central Asian Drug Discovery and Development Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAM201806) and the Science Foundation for Young Scholars of Qinghai Province (2016-ZJ-919Q).