Fos protein expression following acute administration of diethyldithiocarbamate in rats

Dithiocarbamates are compounds commonly used in medicine and in agriculture and their prolonged use is known to result in neurotoxicity. Whether this response may be related to early gene expression has not been investigated. We have addressed this issue by mapping Fos expression in rats acutely injected with diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC) and correlating these data to neural damage in the hippocampus as determined by pyknotic nuclei count. In comparison to saline injected rats, DDTC treatment induced a marked Fos expression in most brain regions at 1 and 3 h. In the hippocampus, a high Fos expression was followed by a variable number of pyknotic nuclei at 6 h, depending on the subregion. The data suggest that, in this model of neurotoxicity, c-fos induction does not reflect a cell commitment to die or survive, but rather a cell response to the DDTC-induced oxidative disorder.