effect of thiamine and vitamin c on tissue lead accumulation following experimental lead poisoning in cyprinus carpio

The present study was conducted to evaluate the possible ameliorative effects of vitamin c and thiamine on lead accumulation in kidney, liver, muscle, brain and gill of experimentally leadpoisoned common carp. at the beginning of the experiment, fish (n=120) were divided into 4 groups randomly with group 1 being considered as the control group. groups 2, 3 and 4 were exposed to lead acetate (5 mg/l, 15 days); groups 3 and 4 received vitamin c (500 mg/kg feed) and thiamine (50 mg/kg feed) during lead acetate exposure, respectively. following this, it was observed that lead exposure caused a significant (p < 0.05) increase in lead content in all examined tissues of fish in group 2 in comparison to control group. it was also found that thiamine supplementation slight ly decreased the augmented levels of lead in the muscle, brain and gill tissues, which was not significantly different from that of the control group. similarly, vitamin c supplementation reduced the augmented concentrations of lead in the muscle to the levels that were not significantly different from that of the control group. based on the present results, neither thiamine nor vitamin c was effective in providing a significant reduction of tissue lead burden in groups 3 and 4 as compared to group 2. thus, monotherapy with such vitamins cannot be proposed as a suitable therapeutic approach for the effective reduction of the tissue lead burden in common carp. however, further investigations using other dosing regimens of each vitamin or combined treatment with chelators are required to reach such a conclusion.