Fundamental Toxicological Sciences

Paper Details

Fundamental Toxicological Sciences
Vol. 6 No. 5 July 02, 2019 p.167-170
Letter
Methylmercury causes neuronal cell death via M1-microglial activation in organotypic slices prepared from mouse cerebral cortex
  • Gi-Wook Hwang (Laboratory of Molecular and Biochemical Toxicology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University / gwhwang@m.tohoku.ac.jp)
Takayuki Hoshi , Takashi Toyama , Akira Naganuma , Gi-Wook Hwang
Laboratory of Molecular and Biochemical Toxicology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University
Keywords: Methylmercury, Microglia, Neuronal cell death, Organotypic brain slice cultures
Abstracts

Methylmercury is an environmental pollutant that causes central nervous system injury. We reported that the expression of the inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-1β was specifically induced in the brains of methylmercury-treated mice. In addition, we recently found that cytotoxic microglia (M1-microglia) may be involved in the induction of inflammatory cytokine expression by methylmercury in mouse cerebral slice cultures. In the current study, we investigated the involvement of M1-microglia in the neuronal cell death caused by methylmercury using mouse cerebral slice cultures. The results revealed that methylmercury activated steady state microglia (M0-microglia) to M1-microglia, but this activation was suppressed by pretreatment with minocycline, a microglial activation inhibitor. In addition, under the same conditions, minocycline suppressed neuronal cell death by methylmercury. These results suggest that methylmercury may induce neuronal cell death via activation to M1-microglia.