Pathophysiological Mechanisms of Mercury’s Effect on Thyroid Gland (original) (raw)

Exposure to mercury and thyroid function: Is there a connection?

Arhiv za farmaciju

Mercury (Hg) is one of the most important environmental pollutants with endocrinedisrupting properties. There is little data from epidemiological studies describing the doseresponse relationship between toxic metal levels and hormone levels. The aim of this study was to use the nearest neighbor matching analysis to determine the difference in Hg concentration in healthy/sick subjects with thyroid disease and to use Benchmark modeling to determine the doseresponse relationship between Hg levels in the blood and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and thyroid hormones in serum. Blood samples were collected and used for Hg measurement using the ICP-MS method, and separated serum was used for hormone analysis. The study showed the existence of a statistically significant difference in Hg levels measured in healthy and sick subjects and the existence of a dose-response relationship between Hg and all measured hormones, with a narrow interval obtained for the Hg-TSH pair. The results of thi...

The effect of mercury on thyroid function in sheep

2010

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of long-term low-dose administration of mercury (Hg) on thyroid function in sheep. In this experiment, 10 clinically healthy, adult, male Iranian sheep, aged approximately 1 year, were randomly allocated into the control (n=5) and mercury (Hg-)-treated (n=5) groups. Both groups were kept under identical conditions in terms of food and environment. The treatment group received mercuric chloride (5 mg/kg/day) orally for eight weeks. Blood samples were drawn between the hours of 0800 and 0900 from both groups on days 0, 14, 28, 42, 56 and 70. Thyroid function was evaluated by measuring the levels of the serum thyroid hormones, including triiodothyronine (T3), thyroxine (T4), free T3 (FT3), free T4 (FT4) and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). Hepatic function was evaluated in both groups by measuring alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), ?-glutamyltransferase (GGT) and total bilirubin (TBIL). Renal fu...