© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Toxicology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
TOXICOLOGICAL HIGHLIGHT |
Corticosteroidogenesis and StAR Protein of Rainbow Trout Disrupted by Human-Use Pharmaceuticals: Data for Use in Risk Assessment
Department of Biological Sciences, Water Institute for Semi-Arid Ecosystems, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4
1 For correspondence via Fax: (403) 329-2082. E-mail: alice.hontela@uleth.ca.
Received June 23, 2006; accepted June 26, 2006
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
Recent reports of presence of pharmaceutical drugs in surface waters (Kolpin et al., 2002
; Metcalfe et al., 2004; Miao et al., 2002) raised concerns about the potential effects of these chemicals in nontarget species, especially those in the aquatic environment (Trudeau et al., 2005). The study highlighted in this issue, "Salicylate disrupts interrenal steroidogenesis and brain glucocorticoid receptor expression in rainbow trout" by Gravel and Vijayan (2006), demonstrated, using state-of-the-art molecular tools in a well-characterized physiological model relevant for environmental toxicology, the disruption of corticosteroidogenesis by acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and salicylic acid, three human-use pharmaceuticals often detected in surface waters.
Pharmaceuticals, substances designed to exert specific physiological effects to prevent, cure, or alleviate symptoms of disease, include drugs,