investigation of cadmium toxicity in mice spleen cells

background: cadmium (cd) is a heavy metal which is widely spread in our surroundings and has a very strong ability to accumulate in the body organs such as spleen. in this study we aimed to determine the genotoxicity and cytotoxicity effects on mice spleen  treated with cadmium. methods: thirty male mice were enrolled in this study and kept in standard conditions. mice were randomly divided into2  experimental groups (control and treatment). the treatment group was exposed to cd intraperitoneally (i.p) (300µm/kg) at different time intervals (0, 6, 12, 24, 48 hrs). twenty four hours after the last exposer mice were killed and the spleen was  removed, then  for studying cytotoxicity, oxidative stress markers namely malondialdehide (mda), glutathione (gsh) and superoxide dismutase (sod) were assayed on homogenized spleen, and comet assay was applied on isolated spleen cells  for genotoxicity & dna damage studies. statistical analyses (t-test and anova) were performed using spss 15 software. results: the concentration of mda and gsh in control group spleen cells were 278.01±35.30 nmol/g.pr and 16.61±4.89 µmol/g.pr and for cd- treated spleen cells were 612.24±32.87 nmol/g.pr and 32.52±4.22 µmol/g.pr, respectively which  were statistically significant (p<0.003). in addition, sod activity in control and cd exposed spleen cells were 69.75±3.12 and 226.91±3.40 u/mg.pr (p<0.001). the comet assay include content comet length, tail length and head diameter showed dna breakage in treated group which was not observed in the control group. conclusions: the results demonstrate that cd has the ability to induce genotoxicity in spleen cells. moreover,  our results show that it is plausible to expect cd induced -cytotoxicity in spleen cells.