Fish histopathology as biomarker to evaluate water quality

Abstract

Aquatic environments contaminated by industrial effluents and urban sewage present as common characteristic the release of xenobiotics complex mixture that potentially affects important aspects related with physiological aspects in fish. In the present work, fish specimens, Astyanax aff. fasciatus and Oreochromis niloticus, were used to evaluate the anthropogenic impact in two lakes (Lake Park and Cedeteg) situated in Guarapuava City, southern of Brazil. The occurrence of morphological changes in gills and liver associated with somatic indexes (Hepatosomatic-HSI and Condition Factor-CF) were used as biomarkers, and two reference sites were used. According to the results, individuals from both studied sites presented morphological damages in gills (aneurysms, hyperplasia, lamellar fusion and neoplasia) and liver (necrosis and leukocyte infiltration). The lesion indexes for liver and gills studied in both lakes were significantly impacted when compared with reference sites, but individuals from Lake Park were more affected. The HSI in both species was not different, but the CF in A. fasciatus decreased in both studied sites. These results suggest that the morphological findings found in the present study were developed due to the urban sewage release, reinforcing the importance of histopathological investigation in biomonitoring programs to evaluate the water quality and environmental assessment.

<b>The use of biomarkers for assessing effects of pollutant stress on fish species from a tropical river in Southeastern Brazil

“…Conversely, decreased CF has been recorded in several disturbed sites, such as, for the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua Linnaeus, 1758 exposed to petroleum (Kiceniuk & Khan, 1987), for white sucker (C. commersoni) in sites with high concentration of metals Cu and Zn (Munkittrick & Dixon, 1988;Miller, Munkittrick & Dixon,1992). In accordance with Liebel et al (2013), CF is an indicative of the health status and may be used to assess field contamination. Alterations in growth rates are induced by contaminants and the explanation is the reallocation of energy to detoxification mechanisms, depleting reserves that were originally destined for growth.…”

“…The HSI is one of indices most often associated with exposure to contaminants (Grady, Mclaughlin, Caldwell, Schmitt, & Stalling, 1992;Hismayasari, Marhendra, Rahayu, Saidin & Supriyadi, 2015). Likewise, the liver is a primary detoxification organ in fish (Hinton & Laurén, 1990;Liebel et al 2013) and an important target organ related to important metabolic mechanisms. According to Casarett, Amdur, Klaassen, and Doull (1991), the liver is the main organ related to biotransformation process of xenobiotics, by increasing in size (hypertrophy), increasing the number of hepatocytes (hyperplasia) or both in polluted areas (Goede & Barton, 1990;Hinton & Lauren;Sudarshan & Kulkarni, 2013).…”

“…conditions (Facey et al, 1999;Liebel, Tomotake, & Ribeiro, 2013). The HSI is one of indices most often associated with exposure to contaminants (Grady, Mclaughlin, Caldwell, Schmitt, & Stalling, 1992;Hismayasari, Marhendra, Rahayu, Saidin & Supriyadi, 2015).…”

Evaluation of histopathological alterations in the gills of Vardar chub ( Squalius vardarensis Karaman) as an indicator of river pollution

“…That procedure has been widely accepted and applied for histopathology-based evaluation of water pollution (Liebel et al 2013;Lujić et al 2015;Rašković et al 2015). Since chemical and microbiological water quality of three rivers in north-eastern Macedonia which were selected for this study, Bregalnica, Zletovska and Kriva, was determined simultaneously with chub sampling (Ramani et al 2014), we were able to associate observed histopathological alterations to specific degrees and types of water contamination.…”

Observations on the health of Tandanus tropicanus (Teleostei: Plotosidae) from an Australian river system

“…Aquatic organisms, including fish, serve as valuable bio-indicators of ecosystem health (Whitfield and Ellis 2002;Pusey et al 2007;Jia and Chen 2013). Specifically, fish body condition indices and histological biomarkers (Thilakaratne et al 2007;Liebel et al 2013) have been used to monitor anthropogenic disturbances in ecosystems. However a paucity of knowledge on spatial and temporal variations in fish pathobiology is limiting the extent to which information collected from monitoring programs can be meaningfully interpreted (Cajaraville et al 2000;Whitfield and Elliot 2002).…”