Dietary Mercury Exposure Resulted in Behavioral Differences in Mice Contaminated with Fish-Associated Methylmercury Compared to Methylmercury Chloride Added to Diet

Table 3

Total mercury concentrations in mice tissues^a.

Tissues	Control	MeHg^b	Fish^c
Blood (n = 8)	0.010 ± 0.002	0.21 ± 0.02	0.20 ± 0.01
Brain stem (n = 3)	0.016 ± 0.006	0.27 ± 0.07	0.20 ± 0.07
Cerebellum (n = 3)	0.016 ± 0.002	0.33 ± 0.06	0.26 ± 0.04
Frontal cortex (n = 3)	0.031 ± 0.013	0.73 ± 0.16	0.41 ± 0.13
Hippocampus (n = 3)	0.024 ± 0.002	0.62 ± 0.26	0.34 ± 0.08
Midbrain (n = 3)	0.020 ± 0.003	0.41 ± 0.20	0.23 ± 0.04
Striatum (n = 3)	0.018 ± 0.002	0.49 ± 0.05	^*0.33 ± 0.01
Liver (n = 6)	0.038 ± 0.008	0.94 ± 0.11	0.79 ± 0.12
Kidney (n = 6)	0.416 ± 0.091	7.3 ± 1.4	6.8 ± 0.5

^aIn μg/g for solid tissues or μg/mL for blood (mean ± SD).
^bMeHg: mice were fed a MeHg-containing diet.
^cFish: mice were fed a 4.9% aimara flesh-containing diet.
All total mercury concentrations in MeHg and fish diet samples significantly higher than those in control diet samples, as determined with a one-way ANOVA followed by a Dunnett’s multiple comparison method (𝑃<0.01).
The symbol ^* indicates a significant difference in mercury concentrations for mice fed the fish-containing diet compared to those fed the MeHg-containing diet, as determined with a one-way ANOVA followed by a Dunnett’s multiple comparison method. ^*𝑃<0.05. The corresponding value appears in bold characters.