Phenobarbital, a hepatic metabolic enzyme inducer, inhibits preneoplastic hepatic lesions with expression of selective autophagy receptor p62 and ER-phagy receptor FAM134B in high-fat diet-fed rats through the inhibition of ER stress

We investigated the role of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-phagy in NAFLD-related hepatocarcinogenesis in high-fat diet (HFD)-fed and/or phenobarbital (PB)-treated rats by clustering the expression levels of the selective autophagy receptor p62 and the ER-phagy-specific receptor FAM134B in preneoplastic hepatic lesions. We obtained four clusters with variable expression levels of p62 and FAM134B in preneoplastic lesions, and a variable population of clusters in each group. PB administration increased the clusters with high expression levels of p62 while HFD feeding increased the clusters with high expression levels of both p62 and FAM134B. The areas of preneoplastic lesions of these clusters were significantly increased than those of other clusters with low expression levels of p62 and FAM134B. The combination of HFD feeding with PB counteracted the effects of each other, and the cluster composition was similar to that in the control group. The results were associated with decreased gene expression of ER stress, inflammatory cytokine, autophagy, and increased expression of antioxidant enzyme. The present study demonstrated that clustering analysis is useful for understanding the role of autophagy in each preneoplastic lesion, and that HFD feeding increased preneoplastic lesions through the inhibition of ER-phagy, which was cancelled with PB administration through the induction of ER-phagy.

Pathological and Clinical Pathological Changes Induced by Four-week, Repeated-dose, Oral Administration of the Wood Preservative Chromated Copper Arsenate in Wistar Rats

Chromated copper arsenate (CCA) is used as a wood preservative worldwide. Exposure to it may adversely affect human health. Some events have increased human exposure to CCA, including the Great East Japan Earthquake, which generated a large amount of lumber debris from CCA-treated woods. We elucidated the toxicity due to daily exposure to CCA over a 4-week period at doses of 0, 8, 40, and 80 mg/kg/day in Wistar Hannover rats. Chromium (Cr) and arsenic (As), but not copper, were detected in the plasma samples of rats treated with various doses of CCA. Males and females showed sedation, and males had poor body weight gain. The clinical pathologies observed in both sexes included hypochromic and microcytic anemia, hepatic and renal dysfunction, and changes in lipid and glucose levels. Histopathologically, males and females showed forestomach hyperkeratosis, mucosal epithelial hyperplasia in the small intestine, rectal goblet cell hypertrophy, and lipofuscin deposition in the proximal renal tubule. Females showed diffuse hepatocellular hypertrophy with increased 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine levels. These results indicated that oral administration of CCA mainly affected hematopoietic, gastrointestinal, hepatic, and renal systems owing to the toxic effects of As and/or Cr. Major toxic effects were observed in both sexes receiving 40 and 80 mg/kg/day.

Inhibition of lipopolysaccharide-induced liver injury in rats treated with a hepatic drug-metabolizing enzyme inducer p,p'-DDT

Hepatocellular hypertrophy in association with drug-metabolizing enzyme induction is considered to be an adaptive change associated with drug metabolism. To improve our understanding of liver hypertrophy, we determined the effect of a single ip injection of either lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or vehicle in male F344 rats with hepatocellular hypertrophy induced by oral delivery of p,p'-DDT for 2 weeks. The rats were sacrificed 3h or 24h after LPS or vehicle injection. LPS induced a focal hepatocellular necrosis in rats fed the control diet. When rats pre-treated with p,p'-DDT were injected with LPS, necrotic foci surrounded by ballooned hepatocytes were observed in the liver. The change was consistent with reduced LPS-mediated increases in plasma hepatic biomarkers, neutrophil influx, and apoptosis, and also associated with hepatic mRNA levels of TNF-α, CYPs, and NOS2. By contrast, when combined with p,p'-DDT and LPS, faint hepatocellular fatty change was extended, together with a synergistic increase in total blood cholesterol. These results suggest that hepatocytes exposed to p,p'-DDT are protected from the cell-lethal toxic effects of an exogenous stimulus, resulting in cell ballooning rather than necrosis in association with reduced inflammation and apoptosis, but compromised by an adverse effect on lipid metabolism.

Anticonvulsant drugs and hematological disease

Many antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are associated with hematological disorders that range from mild thrombocytopenia or neutropenia to anemia, red cell aplasia, until bone marrow failure. Fortunately, potentially fatal hematological disorders such as aplastic anemia are very rare. This review investigates hematological effects associated with classic and newer AEDs: a PubMed search indexed for MEDLINE was undertaken to identify studies in adults, children and animals using the name of all anticonvulsant drugs combined with the terms "hematological disease" and "hematological abnormalities" as key words. The most common hematological alterations occur with older AEDs than newer. Indeed, careful hematological monitoring is needed especially using carbamazepine, phenytoin and valproic acid. The pathogenetic mechanisms are still unknown: they seem to be related to an immunological mechanism, but drugs pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics interactions may also play an important role. Further research is needed to assess the real pathogenetic mechanism at the basis of hematological complications caused by AEDs.

New parameter that supports speculation on the possible mechanism of hypothyroidism induced by chemical substances in repeated-dose toxicity studies

Hypothyroidism induced by xenobiotic treatment was analyzed for possible underlying mechanism(s) on the basis of different responses of the thyroid gland and the liver, using a newly-created database of repeated-dose toxicity of 500 chemicals. Two mechanisms are proposed: direct inhibition of thyroid hormone biosynthesis in the thyroid gland, and stimulated degradation of thyroid hormone by induction of hepatic drug-metabolizing enzymes. In the database there were 10 chemicals inducing hypertrophy/hyperplasia of follicular cells in the thyroid gland and having data on thyroid glands. On the basis of the chemical structure and information available in the literature, we judged three chemicals to be typical thioamide derivatives that act directly on the thyroid gland, and the others as non-thioamide derivatives that were unlikely to have any direct action on the thyroid gland. All these chemicals were classified into two groups using the ratios of relative weight increase rate of thyroid gland versus that of the liver. These values were at least 1.7, but 3.2 or more in the most of the cases for thioamide derivatives, and 1.2 or less for non-thioamide derivatives. This background analysis suggests the feasibility of parameter-supported speculation on the possible underlying mechanism when new repeated-dose toxicity data on hypothyroidism becomes available.

Hypothyroidism caused by phenobarbital affects patterns of estrous cyclicity in rats

We found that repeated treatment with phenobarbital (PB), a thyroid modulator, resulted in a persistent estrous stage in the present study. Although the effects of PB in blocking the surge release of luteinizing hormone (LH), inducing anovulation and prolonging the diestrous period has been well established, there is still no research describing the appearance of persistent estrous states in normal cycling rats dosed with PB. To further study this phenomenon, female rats exhibiting regular estrous cycle were administered an oral dose of PB for 14 consecutive days. Consecutively, vaginal smears were observed and rats from all the groups were sacrificed and serum hormone levels for prolactin, progesterone, estradiol, triiodothyronin (T3), thyroxine (T4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) were measured. Pituitary, thyroid, liver, uteri and ovaries were excised, weighed and further subjected to histological observations. We found that PB induced irregular estrous cycles, especially persistent estrus in rats. Histopathologically, the persistent estrous stages are characterized by persistent vaginal cornification in the vagina, cystic follicles and anovulation in the ovaries. Endocrinologically, serum T3 and T4 levels were significantly lower, and TSH was higher in treated-female rats compared to control females. The serum estradiol level and the estradiol/progesterone ratio tend to increase in treated-females. Furthermore, PB-treated animals with irregular estrous cycle were reduced by T4 replacement. Our data indicate that treatment with PB resulted in hypothyroidism and irregular estrous cycle, particularly a persistent estrous stage in normal cycling female rats.