Objective: To further clarify the effects of arsenic on pregnant rats, fetuses, fetal cells and to verify the experimental results in vitro, and to study the developmental toxicity and its mechanisms of arsenic in depth.
Methods: Teratogenic methods in vivo combined with scanning electron microscopy and histochemical techniques were used in rats.
Results: No apparently toxic symptoms or deaths were observed in rats exposed to various doses of arsenic trioxide of 0, 1, 4 and 10 mg/kg. Fetal death rates in rats were 10.2%, 17.4%, 24.8% and 61.1%, proportions of skeletal deformity were 1.89%, 3.12%, 17.28% and 78.57%, and embryo deformity rates were 3.16%, 5.32%, 13.79% and 40.48% 48 hours after exposure, respectively for those exposed to various doses of arsenic. Damage in fetal epidermal cells and cavities of different size between cell surface and cell junction in multiple sites could be seen under scanning microscope. Dysrhaphia, body anomalies and small limb bud, etc. were main manifestation of embryo deformity. There was a close relationship between nitric oxide and anomalies in fetal development, with a dose-response pattern, showed by inducible nitric oxide synthetase (iNOS) histochemical examinations. In vivo staining showed that excessive apoptosis could be induced by arsenic. And, teratogenic mechanisms of arsenic was analyzed in various ways.
Conclusion: Arsenic has certain teratogenic effects on rats in vivo.