Atrazine, 2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine, (ATR) is the most heavily used herbicide in the United States with over 70 million pounds of atrazine applied annually and it is the most common herbicidal contaminant of ground water in agricultural areas. It is our goal to characterize the effects of prenatal atrazine exposure on the developing mammalian immune system. We hypothesie that in utero exposure to ATR will result in a persistent and potentially debilitating effect on the organism's immune system. Using the Balb/c mouse as a model we ex-posed pregnant female mice to ATR for 21 days starting at day 10 of gestation. ATR or placebo was administered via a time-release pellet implanted subcutaneously. The matrix of the pellet allowed for the daily release of 0.7mg of atrazine for 21 days. The pellets were inserted into the mothers at day 10 post coitus. The resulting offspring were immunized with heat killed S. pneumoniae (HKSP) between 9 and 10 weeks of age. Two weeks following immunization the spleens were harvested, and the splenocytes were phenotypically characterized by flow cytometry. The number of B-cells secreting HKSP-specific antibodies was enumerated via ELIspot analysis. Male offspring had a statistically significant increase in the number anti-HKSP secreting B-cells compared to the controls. There was not a statistically significant change in the number of total splenocytes or the number of CD4 + , CD8 + or B220 + splenocytes. However, atrazine treated mice possessed an increased percentage of CD4 + splenocytes and a decrease in CD8 + splenocytes. Female off-spring did not possess a statistically significant change in IgM production com-pared to controls. And unlike the males, the female offspring had a statistically significant increase in the percent of B220 + splenocytes compared to the controls. These results demonstrate a gender-dependant immunotoxic effect of prenatal exposure to ATR on the offspring.
Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.
Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.
You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.
CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website.
For more information on CDC's web notification policies, see Website Disclaimers.
CDC.gov Privacy Settings
We take your privacy seriously. You can review and change the way we collect information below.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Cookies used to make website functionality more relevant to you. These cookies perform functions like remembering presentation options or choices and, in some cases, delivery of web content that based on self-identified area of interests.
Cookies used to track the effectiveness of CDC public health campaigns through clickthrough data.
Cookies used to enable you to share pages and content that you find interesting on CDC.gov through third party social networking and other websites. These cookies may also be used for advertising purposes by these third parties.
Thank you for taking the time to confirm your preferences. If you need to go back and make any changes, you can always do so by going to our Privacy Policy page.