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An investigation of the value of the Tetrahymena pyriformis as a test organism for assessing the acute toxicity of antidepressants
Author(s) -
Senthilkumar Uma,
Rajasekaran Senthil Kumar,
Kelly John
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.2_supplement.666
Subject(s) - tetrahymena pyriformis , acute toxicity , toxicity , pharmacology , in vitro , mtt assay , toxicology , biology , medicine , tetrahymena , biochemistry
Antidepressants differ greatly from class to class and within individual members of a class in terms of their adverse drug profile and their toxicity in acute overdose conditions. To reduce the use of animals, a number of in vitro tests are now under investigation to determine the acute toxicity of drugs: these involve the use of animal blood cells or human blood cells. The objective of this thesis was to investigate an alternative approach, the fresh water protozoa Tetrahymena pyriformis to evaluate the acute toxicity of antidepressants. The antidepressants used in this study belonged to various groups (tricyclic antidepressants, SSRI and SNRI). The cytotoxic effects of a range of marketed antidepressants were studied using the MTT assay. The results showed that there was good correlation between the results obtained from the MTT assay of this study and those previously obtained from other in vitro studies, namely the rat kidney cells and human blood PBMCs. For MTT, the IC 50 values did not correlate with the FTI (Fatal Toxicity Index) values in humans. Thus it can be concluded that the Tetrahymena pyriformis assay, can be considered for acute toxicity studies but the fact remains that all the in vitro methodologies so far investigated are poor predictors of acute toxicity in humans, and that in the absence of credible in vitro tests, acute toxicity in animals will continue to be the method for predicting the acute toxicity of antidepressants.