Chinese children with autism: A multiple chemical elements profile in erythrocytes.

Several lines of evidence suggested that abnormal levels of certain chemical elements may contribute to the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The present work aimed to investigate the multiple chemical elements profile in the erythrocytes of autistic versus typically developing children (TDC) of China. Analyses were carried out to explore the possible association between levels of elements and the risk as well as the severity of ASD. Erythrocyte levels of 11 elements (32%) among 34 detected elements in autistic group were significantly different from those in the TDC group. To our knowledge, this is the first study which compared the levels of rare earth elements in erythrocytes between children with or without ASD. Five elements including Pb, Na, Ca, Sb, and La are associated with the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) total score. Also, a series of tendencies were found in this research which was believed to affect auditory response, taste, smell, and touch, as well as fear or nervousness. It can be concluded that Chinese autistic children suffer from multi-chemical element imbalances which involves a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors. The results showed a significant correlation between abnormal levels of several chemical elements and the severity of the autistic syndrome. LAY SUMMARY: It is suggested that abnormal levels of some chemical elements may contribute to the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In this work, the impact of element imbalances on the risk and severity of ASD was investigated, focusing on the analysis of abnormal levels of the multi-chemical elements profile in erythrocytes compared with typically developing children. Furthermore, the results showed a significant correlation between abnormal levels of several chemical elements and the severity of the autistic syndrome. Autism Res 2018, 11: 834-845. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Manifestation of the Se, Cd and Mo levels in different components of the peripheral blood of Sprague-Dawley rats poisoned via the respiratory tract.

This study aimed to explore the effects of exogenous element exposure via the respiratory tract on the Se, Cd and Mo concentrations in different components of the peripheral blood in rats as well as to determine the correlations of the three trace elements concentrations among the components. The Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into a control group and several experimental groups treated with different doses. The rats were exposed to a mixed trace element solution through 10 days of intratracheal instillation. The whole blood of all rats was collected and separated into three parts with Percoll density gradient centrifugation. The Se, Cd and Mo levels in whole blood, plasma, red blood cells (RBCs) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The concentrations of the three trace elements increased together with the increase of the given doses (P<0.05), except Cd and Mo in the PBMCs. The three trace elements lacked linearity with the exposure doses in the PBMCs (r, 0.249-0.508), while the opposite was the case for the other components of the peripheral blood (r, 0.806-0.934). The correlation coefficients were higher (0.842-0.962) among the whole blood, plasma and RBCs than between PBMCs and other components, such as Se (0.376-0.529), Cd (0.495-0.604) and, especially, Mo (0.160-0.257). In conclusion, PBMCs might provide information about endogenous factors, and whole blood could more accurately reflect the effects of exogenous factors compared to other blood components.

[Effects of lead exposure on 18 elements in blood and excretions in rats].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of lead exposure on lead and other metal elements contents in rats. METHODS: SD rats were randomly divided into control group and several experiment groups of different doses. The rats were exposed to lead acetate through intragastric administration every other day for 5 times. The whole blood, urine and feces of all the rats were collected. The concentrations of lead and 18 metal elements in these samples were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and inductively coupled plasma atom emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). RESULTS: No significant difference among the groups was found for body weight and organ-body ratios of the rats after lead exposure (P>0.05). With the increase of exposure dose, lead content in blood, total lead in urine and feces tended to increase, while the total lead in urine no longer increased in the high dose group. Significant differences among the groups (P<0.05) were observed for the sodium, magnesium, potassium, strontium, antimony, thallium and bismuth contents in the whole blood, the potassium, iron and antimony contents in the urine, and the calcium, iron, zinc, copper, thallium, bismuth and rare earth elements contents in the feces. CONCLUSION: The effect of lead on the metabolism of divalent metal ions, namely calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper and strontium ion, may be due to the competition of lead with the ions for common delivery carrier. Lead exposure induces the excretion of light rare earth elements and toxic elements (thallium and bismuth), and changes the antimony, sodium and potassium contents in rats. But there is no effect of lead on molybdenum and cadmium in rats.

[Investigation of the enrichment and separation of lead and lead isotopes in simulated blood matrix].

The enrichment and separation method was used in the present paper to overcome the influence of matrix effect on the determination of lead concentration and isotope ratios. The patented method was used to enrich and separate the lead in simulated blood matrix; the lead concentrations and isotope ratios were determined by ICP-MS before and after enrichment and separation. The recovery rate of Pb is more than 99% through this method while the removal rate of major impurity ions such as Na, K is about 80%. The concentrations of each lead isotope decrease with the matrix concentration increasing (p < 0.001), and lead isotope ratios show no significant differences in the matrix of different concentrations. When the matrix concentration is more than 62.5 microg x mL(-1), the strength will decrease with the determination times increasing. It was concluded that the characteristics of this method are of high recovery rate (> 99%), fast, simple and convenient, and it can raise the accuracy and precision of the concentration determination of lead isotopes and has no significant influence on the accuracy of lead isotope ratios determination.