Microcystin-LR affects the hypothalamic-pituitary-inter-renal (HPI) axis in early life stages (embryos and larvae) of zebrafish

Neurotoxicity induced by microcystins and cylindrospermopsin: A review

“…In addition, cross-talk among the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems have been previously reported in fish (Steenbergen et al, 2011). In this sense, Liu et al (2015), Zhao et al (2015b), Su et al (2016) and Chen et al (2018) observed altered transcription of genes along the HPI axis in zebrafish, mostly of gonadotropin hormone, which is also a modulator of the reproductive behavior.…”

“…However, important contributions have been made lately, confirming these mechanisms using mostly in vivo experimental models. In this sense, the studies carried out using different animal models (mice, fish) revealed an important effect on the neurotransmission induced by MC-LR (Wu et al, 2016;Qian et al, 2018;Shin et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018), together with an enhancement in oxidative stress in mice (Shin et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018), and cytoskeleton disruption in the case of rats (Zhang et al, 2018) (Fig. B).…”

“…Nowadays, several in vivo studies have been carried out focusing on the neurotoxic potential MCs can exert in terrestrial animals (Table 4). Many of them have been performed in nematodes (Li et al, 2009a, b;Ju et al, 2013Ju et al, , 2014Moore et al, 2014;Saul et al, 2014), mice (Shin et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018) and rats (Li et al, 2012a, b;Wang et al, 2013;Li et al, 2014;Li et al, 2015b;Zhang et al, 2018) using pure MC congeners, mainly MC-LR. This is probably due to the fact that, although a total of 246 variants of MCs have been described so far (Meriluoto et al, 2017), MC-LR has demonstrated to be one of the most toxic structural variants, contributing on 46-99.8% of the total MCs in natural waters (Ufelmann et al, 2012).…”

Persistent Exposure to Environmental Levels of Microcystin-LR Disturbs Cortisol Production via Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Interrenal (HPI) Axis and Subsequently Liver Glucose Metabolism in Adult Male Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

“…Glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) are the specific intracellular receptors, by which corticosteroids exert their effects [43,44]. Chen et al [45] detected a significant down-regulation of gr but up-regulation of mr in larvae zebrafish after acute exposure to 300 µg/L MC-LR, which suggested that MC-LR acted on the expression of gr and mr and then influenced the HPI axis. Marked down-regulations of gr were documented in the brain of female zebrafish after exposure to 10 and 100 µg/L monocrotophos for 21 d [40].…”

MC-LR induced overproduction of progesterone via inhibiting miR-3473g: in vitro and in vivo evidence

“…MC-LR is highly water stable and conventional water treatment technologies cannot effectively remove the extracellular MC-LR (Zhang et al 2012, Jasim & Saththasivam 2017, Jian et al 2019). Thus, MC-LR is prone to pass into human body and impose a serious threat to humans directly through drinking water or indirectly by consumption of MC-LR contaminated aquatic organisms (Chen et al 2018, Palagama et al 2019.…”