Neurobehavioral Evaluation of C57BL/6J Mice Submitted to Tannery Effluents Intake

The emission of tannery effluents into the environment may cause serious harm to human and environmental health. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated the possible effects of intake of these effluents in mammalian. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the neurobehavioral effects of chronic intake of different tannery effluents concentrations (0.1%, 1% and 5%) (120 days) in male C57BL/6J mice. The animals were subjected to behavioral tests, predictive of anxiety, depression and memory deficits. By the elevated plus maze test was observed that the mice in the 5% of tannery effluents group showed higher anxiety scores. At neophobia test, all the animals exposed to chronic intake of tannery effluents showed higher latency time to start eating, which corresponds to an anxiogenic behavior. Regarding the forced swim test, it was observed that the animals of groups 1% and 5% of tannery effluents had longer in immobility behavior. Finally, the object recognition test showed that the treatments did not cause damage to the animals’ memory. The recognition rate of the new object did not differ among the experimental groups. Thus, it is concluded that male C57BL/6J mice exposed to tannery effluents have predictive neurobehavioral changes of anxiety and depression, with no memory deficit.