Neurobehavioral effect of chronic and bolus doses of methylmercury following prenatal exposure in C57BL/6 weanling mice

Several studies with animals have shown that even low and medium prenatal and postnatal exposure to methylmercury (MeHg) can result in locomotor, motor coordination and learning deficits. However, some behavioural effects of MeHg remain controversial and the methods to model human MeHg exposure in animal still remain to be optimized. We investigated the neurobehavioral effects of two different patterns of MeHg exposure. MeHg was given mixed in palatable food that mice readily ate. For the first pattern (chronic group), C57BL/6 mice dams were given 1.4 μg/g body weight (BW)/day (n = 20) throughout gestation mixed in palatable food. For the second pattern (bolus) dams were given 6.0 μg/g BW/day mixed in palatable food on gestation day 12 and 16 together with a lower chronic dose of 0.85 μg/g BW/day mixed in palatable food on all remaining gestation days (n = 20). Day 12 and 16 were chosen because neuron proliferation and the start of migration for many brain regions occur during that period. Behavioural testing on weanling animals started at 8 weeks. Both the chronic and bolus groups showed an impairment of working memory and visual spatial ability in the radial arm maze task. Other tests did not provide clear evidence that methylmercury exposure had significant adverse effects on locomotor activity, motor coordination or emotional reactivity. However, the chronic groups had a tendency for lower performance in most tests including activity in Skinner box and open field trials, as well as a higher number of anxiety-like behaviors. Chronic exposure to lower levels of MeHg combined to acute exposure with high levels of a few days during gestation appears to be less damaging than chronic exposure to slightly higher levels without acute MeHg exposure even though, equal amounts were administered during gestation. Possibly, as indicated by preliminary data, the relatively larger impact of chronic administration of a higher daily dose could be the consequence of a higher brain MeHg burden in pups compared to brain MeHg levels in the pups from dams receiving a smaller daily dose with 2 large doses on gestation day 12 and 16. Alternatively, bolus MeHg could have had a larger impact if administered on different gestation days when some neural development processes are more sensitive to MeHg.