Uptake of inorganic mercury by the human brain.
Abstract
A 24-year-old man injected himself intravenously with metallic mercury in a suicide attempt, and died 5 months later after cutting his wrists. The brain was removed at postmortem and 7-micron paraffin sections were cut from representative blocks. Dense deposits of mercury were found on autometallography in large cortical motor neurons, but in no other cerebral neurons. Smaller mercury deposits were found in the brain stem (in the mesencephalic trigeminal nucleus, noradrenergic neurons, and in neurons for extraocular muscles), the cerebellum (in the dentate nucleus) and in lateral motor neurons in the C2/3 spinal cord. Mercury deposits were found in glial cells in all regions. The finding that elemental mercury enters human cortical motor neurons in preference to other cerebral neurons raises the possibility that this neurotoxin may play a part in the pathogenesis of some human motor neuron diseases.
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Post-mortem immunostaining of a young man who injected himself intravenously with metallic mercury showed that Hg was distributed mainly in all five subclasses of astrocytes: in the perikarya of the glia limitans, the long processes of ILAs, the perikarya of protoplasmic and fibrous astrocytes, and the varicosities of the VP-As.
“Post-mortem immunostaining of sections of his brain showed that Hg was distributed mainly in all five subclasses of astrocytes: in the perikarya of the glia limitans, the long processes of ILAs, the perikarya of protoplasmic and fibrous astrocytes, and the varicosities of the VP-As.”
From Interlaminar and varicose-projection astrocytes: toward a new understanding of the primate brain (2024) · cites this paper as Pamphlett and Waley, 1996
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Interlaminar and varicose-projection astrocytes: toward a new understanding of the primate brain
Ciani, C., & Falcone, C. (2024) · Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fncel.2024.1477753 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
- Authors
- Pamphlett, R., & Waley, P.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- ORCID
- Pamphlett, R.
- Venue
- Acta Neuropathologica
- Published
- 1996-10-17
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 525-527
- ISSN
- 0001-6322 (ISSN-L)
- 1432-0533
- OpenAlex
- W1996952416
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 0.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Acta Neuropathologica (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- National Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Mercury impact and mitigation studies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Heavy Metal Exposure and Toxicity
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Research
- Keywords
- inorganic mercury, mercury neurotoxicity, motor neurons, glial cells, mesencephalic trigeminal nucleus, dentate nucleus, motor neuron disease, suicide attempts, autometallography
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain, Humans, Male, Mercury, Motor Neurons
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