Nitrocompounds are present in the environment and human diet and form part of vegetables and processed meat products as additives. These compounds are related to negative impacts on human and animal health. The protective effect of ascorbic acid has been demonstrated by some biological systems as regards several nitrocompounds. This work focused on studying the possibility of modeling this effect on nitrite toxicity with the model Caenorhabditis elegans. The three factors studied in this work were ascorbic acid concentration, nitrite exposure concentration, and presence/absence of food. The protective effect was evaluated by scoring lethality and its impact on behavior by means of multivariate statistical methods and imaging analytics. The effects of nitrite and the influence of food availability were evidenced. Apart from increasing lethality, nitrite had disruption effects on movements. All the observed symptoms reduced when ascorbic acid was administered, and it diminished lethality in all cases. Ascorbic acid maintained nematodes' postural capacities. The results suggest that nitrites' nonspecific toxicity in C. elegans can be mitigated by ascorbic acid, as previously evidenced in other biological systems. Thus, our results reveal the ability of C. elegans to reproduce the known protective effect of ascorbic acid against nitrite.
Keywords: C. elegans; ascorbic acid; behavior imaging; multivariate analytics; nitrite; protective effect.