The study indicates a potential risk for serious health consequences, such as Alzheimer's disease. Microplastics, a highly prevalent form of plastic pollution, have infiltrated air, water, and food chains globally. Despite the widespread acknowledgment of their adverse effects on the environment an
New research has found that exposure to microplastics led to behavioral changes and immune alterations in mice, particularly older ones. The study discovered that microplastics accumulated in multiple tissues, including the brain, and may contribute to conditions similar to dementia.Microplastics, a highly prevalent form of plastic pollution, have infiltrated air, water, and food chains globally.
Ross’ team—which includes Research Assistant Professor Giuseppe Coppotelli, biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences graduate student Lauren Gaspar, and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program graduate student Sydney Bartman—exposed young and old mice to varying levels of microplastics in drinking water over the course of three weeks. They found that microplastic exposure induces both behavioral changes and alterations in immune markers in liver and brain tissues.
To understand the physiological systems that may be contributing to these changes in behavior, Ross’ team investigated how widespread the microplastic exposure was in the body, dissecting several major tissues including the brain, liver, kidney, gastrointestinal tract, heart, spleen and lungs. The researchers found that the particles had begun to bioaccumulate in every organ, including the brain, as well as in bodily waste.
That brain infiltration also may cause a decrease in glial fibrillary acidic protein , a protein that supports many cell processes in the brain, results have shown. “A decrease in GFAP has been associated with early stages of some neurodegenerative diseases, including mouse models ofdisease, as well as depression,” Ross said. “We were very surprised to see that the microplastics could induce altered GFAP signaling.
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