Morphometric Brain Abnormalities in Double-Crested Cormorant Chicks Exposed to Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-Dioxins, Dibenzofurans, and Biphenyls

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• 作者：Diane S. Henshel¹ ;   ; ¹ ; J. William Martin¹ ; Ross J. Norstrom² ; John Elliott³ ;   ; ⁴ ; Kimberly M. Cheng³ ; Jamie C. DeWitt¹
• 刊名：Journal of Great Lakes Research
• 出版年：1997
• 出版时间：1997
• 年：1997
• 卷：23
• 期：1
• 页码：11-26
• 全文大小：1519 K

文摘

We examined brains from double-crested cormorant hatchlings from colonies known to be contaminated with low, moderate, and high levels of PCBs, as well as PCDDs and PCDFs, in order to evaluate whether such chemical exposure during embryonic development would result in a TCDD- and TEQ-related induction of gross brain asymmetry as described previously in similarly exposed great blue herons. Our results demonstrate that cormorant embryos exposed in ovo to elevated mixtures of PCBs, PCDDs, and PCDFs in the environment are likely to hatch with asymmetric brains, when the width (medial-lateral), angle (oblique to the medio-lateral axis), height (rostro-caudal), and depth (dorso-ventral) were measured both from dorsal and ventral perspectives. The degree and frequency of this asymmetry correlates to dose based on both TCDD alone and TEQs. This indicates that the TEQ-related brain asymmetry is not a species-specific response. The gross brain asymmetries are present in hatchlings and are readily quantifiable. Thus, they could potentially be used as a biomarker of the effects of TCDD-related compounds on neuromorphological development.