Increase, ROS leads to Increase, LPO

Biological plausibility of this KER lies in the fact that reactive species, in excess, react and change macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids and lipids. Membrane lipids are particularly susceptible to damage by free radicals, as they are composed by unsaturated fatty acids (Su et al. 2019). Hence, increase in ROS production beyond antioxidant system defense capability of cells enables free circulation of molecules such as O2·−, HO·, H2O2, which removes electrons from membrane lipids and then triggers lipid peroxidation (Auten and Davis 2009; Su et al. 2019). 

Analyses performed to support this relation show that KER3 is unchained by the three previously selected xenobiotics, as well as it takes place in a conserved way among species. Connection among the KEs is observed in both in vitro experimental models and in vivo systems, including fishes, birds and mammals.

In cultures of rat hepatocytes, progressive ROS increase during 4 hours of treatment, triggered by DEM (5 mM), is followed by a continuous growth in levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), lipid peroxidation markers (Tirmenstein et al. 2000). This chemical depletes GSH content, leading to an augmentation of ROS levels and, consequently, to lipid peroxidation. In an in vivo model, 52 μM of DEM intraperitoneally injected in male Balb/c mice for two weeks caused a significant decrease in the GSH, increase in GSSG, ROS generation and increase in lipid peroxidation in testicles (Kalia and Bansal 2008).

ATZ (46.4 µM) causes an increase of 48.97% of ROS and of 12.5% in MDA content in cultures of Sertoli-Germ cells from Wistar rats (25–28 days old), after, respectively, 3 and 24 h post-exposure. At a higher concentration (232 µM), these cells reach a maximum peak of ROS production after 6h of exposure, while MDA generation gets to the peak only after 24 h of treatment (Abarikwu, Pant, and Farombi 2012). In in vivo model, ATZ (38.5, 77 e 154 mg/Kg bw/day) led to a decrease in total antioxidant capacity (TAC) in a dose-dependent manner in male Sprague-Dawley rats of Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) ATZ-treated for 30 days. Which indirectly suggests increase in ROS levels – and increased malondialdehyde (MDA) content in 154 mg/Kg (Song et al. 2014). 

In relation to Hg, it was found that male young Wistar rats exposed to an initial dose of 4.6 μg/Kg of this metal (with following doses of 0.07 μg/Kg/day) displayed an increase in ROS levels, followed by an elevation of MDA content in testicles and epididymis of these rats 60 days post-exposure (Rizzetti et al. 2017). Other assays still carried out with male rats showed that the heavy metal induces oxidative stress with a single subcutaneous dose of 5 mg/Kg, by a substantial diminishment of activity of the main testicle antioxidant enzymes: SOD, CAT and GPX. Consequently, blood hydroperoxide and testicle MDA levels rose in a relevant way (El-Desoky et al. 2013).

Furthermore, Hy-Line Brown laying hens fed with 4 experimental diets containing graded levels of Hg at 0.280, 3.325, 9.415, and 27.240 mg/Kg, respectively, for 10 weeks had GSH content significantly decreased in all Hg-treatment groups in ovaries, whilst SOD, CAT, GPX and glutathione reductase (GR) enzyme activities were significantly reduced, pointing to ROS accumulation. MDA content strongly increased in the 27.240-mg/Kg Hg group (Ma et al. 2018). 

Hence, it can be deduced that, as in other adjacent relations evaluated, there is also evidence here that upstream KE is initially required in order to downstream KE take place, which reaffirms time concordance. Besides this, data enhance dose and incidence concordances for this KER.

This mechanism can be better understood through a process chain that consists of initiation, propagation and termination, as discussed by (Yin, Xu, and Porter 2011). In their review, these authors summarized a series of chemical reactions that develop during all this self-oxidation process and represent them in a schematic manner, as displayed in figure below.

Furthermore, although phospholipid oxidizability is lower, once their rate of diffusion in membranes is slower, the kinetics for this kind of reaction shown in figure follows the same law of velocity (steady-state rate) of homogeneous systems (equation below) (Yin, Xu, and Porter 2011). Oxygen consumption of the equation represents the rate of steady state, while rate of radical generation is defined by R_i, the constant of propagation rate is expressed as k_p and the termination rate constant for the reaction is called k_t.

-d[O] / dt = k_p / (2k_t)^1/2. [L-H] . R_i^1/2

For instance, empirical evidences show that rat hepatocytes begin ROS production after the first 30 minutes of DEM exposition (5 mM), growing linearly for all the remaining time, whereas the increase in products of lipid peroxidation (TBARS) starts only from the first hour of exposure (Tirmenstein et al. 2000).