Abstract
Mercuric chloride (10 μmole/kg body weight) injected every day into mice showed an inhibitory effect on GSH peroxidase, a selenoenzyme, in the kidney on Days 4 and 8. The simultaneous administration of the same dose of sodium selenite provided complete protection against the reduction of the enzyme activity induced by Hg in spite of the fact that the kidneys of these animals accumulated nearly twice as much as Hg as those of mice receiving Hg alone. Hg given alone resulted in a Hg Se atomic ratio of 10.9 in the kidney with GSH peroxidase inhibition. Little GSH peroxidase inhibition occurred in the liver or kidney when Hg was given with Se. In these cases Hg Se ratios were much lower, ranging from 1.0 to 2.2. The maximum concentration of Hg ion which showed no inhibitory effect on purified GSH peroxidase of rabbit erythrocytes was 10 −5 m. This concentration was higher than the final concentration of Hg in a test tube assaying the activity of GSH peroxidase in vivo. It is probable that deficiency of available Se due to its increased binding to Hg in the kidney resulted in the reduced activity of GSH peroxidase in that organ.
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