Abstract
The smoking of tobacco continues to be the leading cause of premature death worldwide and is linked to the development of a number of serious illnesses including heart disease, respiratory diseases, stroke and cancer. Currently, cell line based toxicity assays are typically used to gain information on the general toxicity of cigarettes and other tobacco products. However, they provide little information regarding the complex disease-related changes that have been linked to smoking. The ethical concerns and high cost associated with mammalian studies have limited their widespread use for in vivo toxicological studies of tobacco. The zebrafish has emerged as a low-cost, high-throughput, in vivo model in the study of toxicology. In this study, smoke condensates from 2 reference cigarettes and 6 Canadian brands of cigarettes with different design features were assessed for acute, developmental, cardiac, and behavioural toxicity (neurotoxicity) in zebrafish larvae. By making use of this multifaceted approach we have developed an in vivo model with which to compare the toxicity profiles of smoke condensates from cigarettes with different design features. This model system may provide insights into the development of smoking related disease and could provide a cost-effective, high-throughput platform for the future evaluation of tobacco products.
Highlights
The link between tobacco use and the development of serious diseases such as certain cancers, heart disease, respiratory diseases and stroke are well establishedPLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0115305 December 19, 2014Zebrafish Larvae and Cigarette Smoke Condensate Toxicity [1]
While more work is required to evaluate which cigarette characteristics have the greatest influence on the toxicity profiles of individual condensates, we have shown that the zebrafish model can provide in vivo data for evaluating the adverse effects associated with different tobacco products, identifying those that warrant further investigation
Overall it is apparent that the zebrafish toxicity models developed in this study are capable of producing a complex, multifaceted profile that can be used to assess the toxicity associated with cigarette smoke condensates
Summary
The link between tobacco use and the development of serious diseases such as certain cancers, heart disease, respiratory diseases and stroke are well establishedPLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0115305 December 19, 2014Zebrafish Larvae and Cigarette Smoke Condensate Toxicity [1]. More than 37,000 Canadians have been estimated to die prematurely on an annual basis as a consequence of tobacco smoking [3] and costs to the health care system are estimated at over $4.3 billion annually [4]. Tobacco use remains a public health concern in Canada. Cigarettes are the most widely consumed tobacco product in Canada [5]. The majority of cigarettes sold in the Canadian market are similar in terms of their dimensions, the presence of a ventilated cellulose acetate filter, and in the exclusive use of Virginia flue-cured tobacco [6]. Cigarettes featuring a novel copper phthalocyaninecontaining filter [7, 8] or a super slim design [9] were launched in Canada, and information on the toxicity profiles of these new cigarettes is not widely available
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