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New insights into the spleen injury by mitochondrial dysfunction of chicken under polystyrene microplastics stress
Summary
Chickens exposed to polystyrene microplastics in their drinking water developed significant spleen damage, with higher doses causing worse effects. The microplastics disrupted mitochondrial function in spleen cells, triggering both apoptosis (programmed cell death) and ferroptosis (iron-dependent cell death), along with harmful oxidative stress. These findings are relevant to human health because the spleen plays an important role in immune function, and similar damage pathways could potentially occur in people exposed to microplastics.
Microplastics biological toxicity, environmental persistence and biological chemicals have been paid widespread attention. Microplastics exposed to chicken spleen injury of the specific mechanism is unclear. Thus, we randomly assigned chickens to 4 groups: C (normal diet), L-MPs (1 mg/L), M-MPs (10 mg/L), and H-MPs (100 mg/L), and assessed spleen damage after 42 d of exposure. Morphologically, the boundary between the red and white pulp of the spleen was blurred, along with the expansion of the white pulp. It was further speculated that microplastics induced mitochondrial dynamic homeostasis (Drp1 upgraded, Mfn1, Mfn2, and OPA1 reduced), and provoked the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway (Bcl-2/Bax decreased, cytc, caspase3, and caspase9 raised), resulting in redox imbalance and lipid peroxide accumulation (MDA increased, CAT, GSH, and T-AOC plummeted), and further stimulated ferroptosis (FTH1, GPX4, and SLC7A11 decreased). Here we explored the impact of polystyrene microplastics on the spleen, as well as the programmed death (apoptosis and ferroptosis) involved, and the regulative role of mitochondria in this process. This could be of significant importance in bridging the gap in laboratory research on microplastics-induced spleen injury in chicken.