Mercury disease

Fillion J, Kuhn J, Druet P, Bellon B (1994) HgCl2 injections at birth induce specific tolerance of mercury disease in Brown-Norway (BN) rats. FASEB Meeting, Anaheim, 24-28 April 1994... 

Galen, a physician whose views outUved him by about a thousand years, died about 200 AD. He beUeved that mercurials were toxic, and did not use any mercury compound therapeutically. However, as a result of Arabian influence, the therapeutic uses of mercury were slowly recognized by Western Europe. In the thirteenth century mercury ointments were prescribed for treating chronic diseases of the skin. Mercury and its compounds, such as mercurous chloride, mercuric oxide, mercuric chloride, and mercuric sulfide, were used widely from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and to some extent in the twentieth century. During the first half of the twentieth century, the primary therapeutic uses of mercury included bactericidal preparations, such as mercuric chloride, mercuric oxycyanide, and mercuric oxide and diuretics, such as aryl HgX (Novasural) and mercurated ahyl derivatives (14). 

The most common toxic metals in industrial use are cadmium, chromium, lead, silver, and mercury less commonly used are arsenic, selenium (both metalloids), and barium. Cadmium, a metal commonly used in alloys and myriads of other industrial uses, is fairly mobile in the environment and is responsible for many maladies including renal failure and a degenerative bone disease called "ITA ITA" disease. Chromium, most often found in plating wastes, is also environmentally mobile and is most toxic in the Cr valence state. Lead has been historically used as a component of an antiknock compound in gasoline and, along with chromium (as lead chromate), in paint and pigments. 

Paracelsus, a Swiss physician of the sixteenth century, stated that everything is toxic, it is just the dose that matters. This statement still holds true 500 years after Paracelsus developed it to defend the use of toxic compounds such as lead and mercury in the treatment of serious diseases such as syphilis. Chemical compounds cause their toxic effects by inducing changes in cell physiology and biochemistry, and an understanding of cellular biology is a prerequisite if one wishes to understand the nature of toxic reactions. 

Heinz GH. 1996. Mercury poisoning in wildlife. In Fairbrother A, Locke LN, Hoff GL, editors, Noninfectious diseases of wildlife, 2nd ed. Ames (lA) Iowa State University Press, p. 118-127. 

He also developed a seed disinfectant that was free of poisonous mercury, then widely used in agriculture. The disinfectant helped control Tilletia, a smut fungus that causes diseases in cereal crops. The product was introduced to Swiss agriculture in 1942, when grain supplies were extremely precarious. 

In mammals, as in yeast, several different metallothionein isoforms are known, each with a particular tissue distribution (Vasak and Hasler, 2000). Their synthesis is regulated at the level of transcription not only by copper (as well as the other divalent metal ions cadmium, mercury and zinc) but also by hormones, notably steroid hormones, that affect cellular differentiation. Intracellular copper accumulates in metallothionein in copper overload diseases, such as Wilson s disease, forming two distinct molecular forms one with 12 Cu(I) equivalents bound, in which all 20 thiolate ligands of the protein participate in metal binding the other with eight Cu(I)/ metallothionein a molecules, with between 12-14 cysteines involved in Cu(I) coordination (Pountney et ah, 1994). Although the role of specific metallothionein isoforms in zinc homeostasis and apoptosis is established, its primary function in copper metabolism remains enigmatic (Vasak and Hasler, 2000). 

Silver and mercury salts have a long history of use as antibacterial agents.241-243 The use of mercurochrome ((40), Figure 18) as a topical disinfectant is now discouraged. Silver sulfadiazene (38) finds use for treatment of severe burns the polymeric material slowly releases the antibacterial Ag+ ion. Silver nitrate is still used in many countries to prevent ophthalmic disease in newborn children.244 The mechanism of action of Ag and Hg is through slow release of the active metal ion—inhibition of thiol function in bacterial cell walls gives a rationale for the specificity of bacteriocidal action. 

Measuring body temperature is important for the detection of disease and assessment of the response to treatments. The first thermometer was developed by Galileo in 1603. Thermometers for measuring body temperature have been in use since about 1870. The first measurements taken were axillary, and later oral and rectal measuring methods were introduced. The working principle of those thermometers, the expansion of matter by temperature increase, is still used for body temperature measurement in mercury-in-glass thermometers. Electronic thermo-... 

Davies, F.C.W. 1991. Minamata disease a 1989 update on the mercury poisoning epidemic in Japan. Environ. Geochem. Health 13 35-38. 

Fujiki, M. 1963. Studies on the course that the causative agent of Minamata disease was formed, especially on the accumulation of the mercury compound in the fish and shellfish of Minamata Bay. Jour. Kumamoto Med. Soc. 37 494-521. 

Fujiki, N. 1980. The pollution of Minamata Bay by mercury and Minamata disease. Pages 493-500 in R.A. Baker (ed.). Contaminants and Sediments, Vol. 2. Ann Arbor Science Publ., Ann Arbor, MI. 

Heinz, G.H. 1996. Mercury poisoning in wildlife. Pages 118-127 in A. Fairbrother, L.N. Locke, and G.L. Hoff (eds.). Noninfectious Diseases of Wildlife, 2nd edition. Iowa State Univ. Press, Ames. 

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