Can the Toxic Heavy Metals Be Beneficial at Trace Levels? Understanding Their Outranged Biological Functions

This article aims to collate such investigations conducted during the last two decades with trace levels of cadmium, mercury and arsenic toxicity against animal systems. There are a total of 13 pre-clinical works demonstrating the protective or beneficial effect of mercury, cadmium and arsenic at trace levels. Such literature reports with lead could not be found. From the outcome of the current literature investigation it is evident that, trace levels of toxic heavy metals namely arsenic, cadmium and mercury possess remarkable protective and beneficial effects chiefly on growth, developmental and reproductive parameters against animal systems pre-clinically, in contrast to their known toxic effects-operated by multiple mechanisms which provided some empirical support for further understanding of the outranged biological functions of the heavy metals. Further mechanistic works on this sphere may pave the way for a better understanding of the protective role of toxic heavy metals for the accomplishment of animals including humans.PMID:37824371 | DOI:10.1615/JEnvironPatholToxicolOncol.2023049292

Source: Journal of Environmental Pathology, Toxicology and Oncology - October 12, 2023 Category: Environmental Health Authors: Sanjib Bhattacharya Source Type: research