Objective To study preliminarily the feasibility of erythrocyte covalent crosslinking spectrin as a surrogate biomarker of n-hexane induced neurotoxicity in human population.
Methods A total of 15 workers occupationally exposed to n-hexane, including 5 workers with abnormal neuro-electromyography (cases at early stage of occupational chronic n-hexane poisoning, OCHP) and 10 workers without any abnormal neuro-electromyography (cases as the general exposed), and 10 healthy workers without any exposure to n-hexane and other known hazards were studied. Their peripheral venous blood samples were taken, membrane proteins of erythrocytes were extracted and then separated with polypropylene gel electrophoresis by the molecular weight. The protein crosslinking was identified by respective dying with coomassie brilliant blue and silver nitrate, and finally the spectrin of crosslinking proteins was examined with western blot assay. Positive rate of crosslinking spectrin were compared among different groups.
Results The dying with coomassie brilliant blue showed there was no high molecular weight crosslinking strip in all separated membrane protein samples, but dying with silver nitrate showed crosslinking strips in some protein samples and the crosslinking strips were testified to be spectrin by the western blot. The exposed workers with OCHP had significantly higher positive rate of crosslinking spectrin than exposed workers without abnormality (100.0% vs. 10.0%, P < 0.01), while no crosslinking spectrin was examined among control workers.
Conclusion The erythrocyte crosslinking spectrin has the potential to be used as a surrogate biomarker of n-hexane induced neurotoxic effects among exposed population.
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