RESUMO
Atrazine (ATZ) is a herbicide worldwide used. That can cause oxidative damage in non-target organisms, such as fish. Furthermore, the threat of exposure to pesticides together with poor nutrition is hazardous to the normal development of fish, and supplementation of the fish diet with antioxidants compounds is an alternative approach to prevent the hazardous effects of pesticide exposure. Here we aimed to investigate the capacity of diphenyl diselenide (PhSe)2 diet supplementation to improve the antioxidant defense of Cyprinus carpio (carp) exposed to environmental concentrations of ATZ. To prove the efficiency of (PhSe)2, we used the Integrated Biomarkers Response (IBR) methodology. Therefore, carp were fed for 8 weeks diets either with or without (PhSe)2 and exposed to 2 or 10µg/L of ATZ for 96h, euthanized, and their liver, gills, and muscle tissues were removed for biochemical assays. ATZ was able to cause oxidative damage from reactive species production in all tissues of carp, as observed by the increase of lipid peroxidation and protein damage. The activity of some antioxidant enzymes was inhibited in carp exposed to ATZ. However, (PhSe)2 supplementation was able to prevent this ATZ-induced damage by improving the activities of antioxidant enzymes and through antioxidant competence of (PhSe)2per se. Furthermore, IBR was shown to be a useful tool to compare treatments, even at different concentrations, and identify the efficiently antioxidant behavior of the organoselenium compound.