• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.147-152
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• 2001

Whether the pretreatment of sublethal arsenic or cadmium may prevent from lethality of arsenic or cadmium to mice, respectively, and also the protection against to lethality of arsenic or cadmium which might be induced by pretreatment of arsenic or cadmium may be related with their hepatic glutathione contents were investigated. When sodium arsenite or cadmium chloride was subcutaneously injected to mice (ICR strain) using lethal doses, all mice of both group were killed. The mortality of mice which were subsequently injected with lethal arsenic 24 hours after pretreatment of sublethal arsenic was decreased, and the same result was obtained in the case of cadmium. Sublethal pretreatment of arsenic or cadmium prior to lethal arsenic or cadmium treatment to mice, respectively, didn't decrease hepatic glutathione contents of the survived mice, while decreases of that contents in liver were observed in the mice just after they died. Cadmium pretreatment decreased mortality of mice which subsequently injected with lethal arsenic, while arsenic pretreatment didn't protect against cadmium lethality. These results indicate that protection against arsenic or cadmium lethality to mice induced by pretreatment of sublethal arsenic or cadmium may be directly related to other factors induced by sublethal camium pretreatment, not to hepatic glutathione contents.