Agrochemical-mediated cardiotoxicity in zebrafish embryos/larvae: What we do and where we go

Abstract

The massive application of agrochemicals and associated environmental residues greatly threaten human health. Cardiac dysfunction, as a major contributing factor to human mortality, is increasingly reported in health risk assessments to be associated with agrochemical exposure. In this mini-review, we summarize the cardiotoxicity of various agrochemicals including herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and acaricides on zebrafish embryos/larvae and systematically discuss the role of cardiac development-related pathway disorders, imbalance in Ca²⁺ homeostasis, mitochondrial dysfunction, and general negative effects such as oxidative stress and apoptosis. Moreover, the crosstalk identified in combined analysis of predisposing factors of cardiac dysfunction not only explains the coexistence of multiple negative effects after agrochemical exposure, but also helps researchers identify key factors in predisposing cardiotoxicity as well as provides a theoretical basis for the diagnosis and treatment of certain congenital cardiac diseases.

Graphic abstract

Keywords:

• Agrochemicals
• cardiactoxicity
• crosstalk between pathways
• zebrafish

HANDLING EDITORS:

• Taicheng An and Lena Q. Ma.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Heilongjiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Soil Protection and Remediation for supporting this work.

Disclosure statement

The authors reported no declarations of competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

This review was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China (ZD2020C001), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31901189).