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. 2020 Aug 1:728:138852.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138852. Epub 2020 Apr 23.

Immunotoxicity of petroleum hydrocarbons and microplastics alone or in combination to a bivalve species: Synergic impacts and potential toxication mechanisms

Shuge Sun  1 , Wei Shi  1 , Yu Tang  1 , Yu Han  1 , Xueying Du  1 , Weishang Zhou  1 , Yuan Hu  2 , Chaosheng Zhou  2 , Guangxu Liu  3
Affiliations

Immunotoxicity of petroleum hydrocarbons and microplastics alone or in combination to a bivalve species: Synergic impacts and potential toxication mechanisms

Shuge Sun et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Both the frequent occurrence of accidental petroleum spills and the ubiquitous presence of microplastics (MPs) in the sea may pose severe threats to marine species. However, the immunotoxic impacts of these two types of pollutants and the underlying toxication mechanisms still remain largely unknown in sessile filter-feeding bivalve mollusks. Therefore, the impacts of exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons and MPs alone or in combination on the total count, cell type composition, and phagocytic activity of hemocytes were investigated in the blood clam, Tegillarca granosa. In addition, the intracellular ROS content, cell viability, degree of DNA damage, and expression levels of genes from immune-, apoptosis-, and immunotoxicity-related pathways were analyzed to reveal the potential toxication mechanisms. The results demonstrated that exposure to petroleum hydrocarbons and MPs alone or in combination at environmentally realistic concentrations could exert significant immunotoxic impacts on the blood clam, which may be caused by alterations in a series of physiological and molecular processes. In addition, the immunotoxicity of petroleum hydrocarbons could be significantly aggravated by the copresence of MPs, which suggests that coexposure to these two pollutants deserves closer attention.

Keywords: Immunotoxicity; Microplastics; Petroleum hydrocarbons; Toxication mechanism.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, the contents of this manuscript have not been copyrighted or published previously and are not now under consideration for publication elsewhere. We declare that we do not have any commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted.

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