Thallium intoxication produces neurochemical alterations in rat brain.

Thallium, a rodenticide, has been shown to produce several neurological symptoms including motor weakness, ataxia, tremor, convulsion, coma and death. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of acute or subacute exposure to thallium on several neurochemical biomarkers in rat brain. In the acute study, adult male CD rats were treated with 0 or 20 mg thallium/kg intraperitoneally (ip) and sacrificed 2, 6, or 24 hr after exposure. In the subacute study, animals were treated with 0 or 5 mg thallium/kg ip daily for 10 days and sacrificed 24 hr after the last dose. Acute injections of thallium produced in the frontal cortex significant increases in glutamine concentration after 6 hr and in taurine after 6 and 24 hr. In hippocampus, significant decreases in aspartic acid and taurine concentrations were found after 6 hr. Subacute exposure to thallium produced significant increases of dopamine (DA), 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and serotonin (5-HT) in amygdala and increases in 5-HT concentration in hypothalamus. DA or muscarinic cholinergic (MCh) receptor binding did not show any significant alterations in caudate nucleus or frontal cortex after acute or subacute exposure to thallium. However, when membranes prepared from control caudate nuclei were incubated with thallium (1-100 microM) in vitro, we observed a dose-dependent decrease in DA and MCh receptor binding. These data suggest that the neurotoxicity produced by thallium exposure may be associated with changes in the concentrations of amino acids and other neurotransmitters in various regions of the rat brain.