This brief review is focused on those heavy metals (cadmium, gold and mercury) that have strong associations with autoimmunity. Cadmium results of rats and mice results in autoimmune responses that vary with species and inbred strain of animals. However, there is no solid evidence demonstrating that the renal pathology observed in humans exposed to cadmium has an autoimmune pathogenesis.
Immunotoxicity is an important health hazard of heavy metal exposure. Because the risk of combined exposure in the population cannot be neglected, we examined whether subchronic exposure to a mixture of metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, chromium, nickel, manganese, and iron) via drinking water at contemporary Indian groundwater contamination levels and at concentrations equivalent to the WHO maximum permissible limit (MPL) in drinking water can induce immunotoxicity in male rats.
Cigarette smoking has been proposed as a risk factor for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but because of the low incidence of ALS this association has been examined only with case-control methods. The authors prospectively assessed the relation between cigarette smoking and ALS mortality among participants in the Cancer Prevention Study II cohort of the American Cancer Society,
Eighteen cadavers from routine autopsy casework were subject to a study of tissue levels of total mercury in brain, thyroid, and kidney samples by atomic absorption. On these same cadavers, all dental amalgam fillings (the most important source of inorganic mercury exposure in the general population, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) were charted.
