ALTERAÇÕES COMPORTAMENTAIS EM CAMUNDONGOS EXPOSTOS DERMICAMENTE A EFLUENTE DE CURTUME

Abstract

Effluents are highly polluting waste, which can have negative impacts on people's health and the environment. However, studies investigating the effects of dermal exposure to these pollutants on the central nervous system of experimental mammalian models are still incipient. In this sense, and in order to expand the knowledge beyond the neurotoxic effects observed when the water contaminated by these xenobiotics is ingested, the neurobehavioral effects of the dermal exposure of males from the C57Bl/6J and Swiss lineages were analyzed. The animals were exposed the crude effluent (wet blue type) for two hours for five days, totaling 15 days of exposure. Afterwards, the animals were submitted to the high cross maze (anxiety predictive test) and to the object recognition test (used to identify memory deficit). Our data showed that dermal exposure to tannery effluent induced an anxiogenic behavior in the animals, when compared to those that did not have direct contact with these pollutants. It was also observed that the animals exposed to the effluent of tannery obtained lower rates of recognition of new objects, evidencing the memory deficiency and indicating a possible influence of the constituents of the tannery effluent on animal cognition. The present study supports the hypothesis that dermal exposure to tannery effluents causes behavioral disturbances in C57Bl/6J and Swiss mice