Mutagenic and teratogenic effects of acrylamide in the mammalian spot test.

Acrylamide (AA), a vinyl monomer, is widely applied in industry as well as research laboratories. Because of its known neurotoxicity occupational exposure to AA has been limited by national regulation in 13 countries (IARC, 1986). Recently it was demonstrated that AA is also mutagenic. A review was given by Dearfield et al. (1988). The clastogenic activity of AA is well documented (Adler et al., 1988, Cihak and Vontorkova, 1988; Shelby et al., 1986, 1987). However, experimental results are contradictory as to whether AA induces gene mutations. Furthermore, experimental clarification of whether AA is teratogenic is also needed, because the available results, obtained with rats, are conflicting (Dearfield et al., 1988). Since the spot test experimental protocol allows the detection of teratogenic effects, we used it to detect an effect of AA on mutagenicity and teratogenicity as well. Only such types of malformations will be detected which have no adverse effect on the development of the conceptus. To confirm possible observations on malformed offspring obtained in the spot test and also to screen for additional types of malformations, 17-day-old fetuses of a group of parallel-treated pregnant females were examined morphologically and histologically. AA is mutagenic in the spot test using (T x HT)F1 embryos. The doubling dose of AA is calculated to be 30 mg/kg. In the 3 x 75 mg/kg dose group about 10% of the offspring had a tail kink. Examination of 17-day-old fetuses suggests that the mesenchyme in general is the main target of AA embryotoxicity. The wide application of AA, its mutagenicity in male germ cell (Shelby et al., 1986, 1987) and the high probability that it induces specific-locus mutations in postmeiotic germ cells demand the estimation of the genetic risk due to AA exposure in the specific-locus assay