Effect of Chronic Administration of Nickel on Affective and Cognitive Behavior in Male and Female Rats: Possible Implication of Oxidative Stress Pathway

Abstract

Nickel (Ni) toxicity has been reported to produce biochemical and behavioral dysfunction. The present study was undertaken to examine whether Ni chronic administration can induce alterations of affective and cognitive behavior and oxidative stress in male and female rats. Twenty-four rats, for each gender, divided into control and three test groups (n = 6), were injected intraperitoneally with saline (0.9% NaCl) or NiCl2 (0.25 mg/kg, 0.5 mg/kg and 1 mg/kg) for 8 weeks. After treatment period, animals were tested in the open-field, elevated plus maze tests for anxiety-like behavior, and forced swimming test for depression-like behavior. The Morris Water Maze was used to evaluate the spatial learning and memory. The hippocampus of each animal was taken for biochemical examination. The results showed that Ni administration dose dependently increased anxiety-like behavior in both tests. A significant increase in depression-like symptoms was also exhibited by Ni treated rats. In the Morris Water Maze test, the spatial learning and memory were significantly impaired just in males treated with 1 mg/kg of Ni. With regard to biochemical analysis, activity of catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were significantly decreased, while the levels of nitric oxide (NO) and lipid peroxidation (LPO) in the hippocampus were significantly increased in the Ni-treated groups. Consequently, chronic Ni administration induced behavioral and biochemical dysfunctions.

Neuroprotective effect of melatonin on nickel-induced affective and cognitive disorders and oxidative damage in rats

“…Another central effect that we highlighted was the effect of Ni on memory function. Our results also revealed that the chronic administration of Ni causes learning and memory deficits in the MWM test, confirming our previous findings [13]. These results were parallel to a previous report on the association of Ni exposure with memory impairment assessed in the MWM [10].…”

“…Ni is known to disrupt the pro-/antioxidant balance in the cells [13], which may precede neurobehavioral disorders. Our previous study showed that chronic Ni exposure induced depression-like, anxiety-like, memory deficit, and alterations in OS markers in the hippocampus [13], a crucial brain region in learning, memory processes, and emotion regulation [14,15]. These effects are similar to those induced by other heavy metals such as Copper(Cu), Cadmium(Cd) and Aluminum(Al) [16][17][18][19].…”

Affective Behavior Dysregulation Was Induced by Chronic Administration of Copper in Wistar Rats

“…A dose of 1 mg/kg CuCl 2 showed maximum anxiety-like and depression-like symptoms as compared to controls. The Cu effects observed in our study are similar to numerous heavy metals (Cd, Al and Ni)[7] [8][10].…”

“…Exposure to metals from environment, which are highly neurotoxic and have no other biological functions, such as aluminum (Al), lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd), has long been debated as a potential environmental risk factor for mood disorders [7] [8]. However, nowadays, people are mainly focusing on biologically important metals such as copper (Cu), because their imbalance is related to a profound physiological alteration including the central nervous system (CNS) [9] [10].…”

Update of the risk assessment of nickel in food and drinking water

“…Spatial learning and memory were impaired in males at the top dose only. There were associated changes in enzymes involved in antioxidant response and evidence of oxidative stress, which the authors consider may be the causative mechanism (Lamtai et al., 2018). Further evidence of oxidative stress is evident from a report that nickel causes elevation of metallothionein and oxidative stress in mouse brain (Sadauskiene et al., 2013).…”