Occurrence of mercury in the knee joint tissues

Abstract

Introduction: Mercury is one of the elements that are commonly found in nature. This element is highly toxic, mainly affecting the nervous system, kidneys and lungs. Mercury ions can accumulate in bone and cartilage and build up behind calcium ions in carbonates and hydroxyapatites. High mercury concentrations in the spongy bone compared to the compacted bone were found. Aim: The aim of the manuscript was to assess the mercury content in tibial and femoral tissue taken from patients undergoing knee arthroplasty. Material and methods: Samples were taken from 17 patients (tibial and femoral bone samples), collected from patients who underwent knee arthroplasty. The tested samples were homogenized and determined by atomic absorption spectrometry and the AMA 254 amalgamation technique. Studies have shown mercury presence in all samples tested. Results and discussion: The range of mercury content in the tested samples was 3.3–19.18 μg/kg. The average for the examined bone tissue samples was 8.71 μg/kg, while for the tibia it was slightly higher (9.08 μg/kg), compared to the femur (8.34 μg/kg). There was a high mercury content in men’s bone tissue (10.05 μg/kg), compared to women (8.15 μg/kg). In both sexes, higher levels of mercury in the tibia were found in men (11.08 μg/kg in men, and 8.24 μg/kg in women). Conclusions: The dependence between mercury concentration in bone tissue and the patient’s age, weight and BMI, the number of cigarettes smoked and the consumption of fish and seafood were checked. There were no statistically significant correlations between these indicators.

Structural Equation Modelling of Mercury Intra-Skeletal Variability on Archaeological Human Remains

“…In a previous study, the impact of mercury atmospheric concentrations in A Lanzada Roman (n = 43) and post-Roman (n = 33) population was assessed by analysing three types of bones (ribs, long bones, and crania). No relationship was found between mercury content and age in any of the two cohorts (Álvarez-Fernández et al, 2020), in line with results from recent research from biopsies (Babuśka-Roczniak et al, 2021;Zioła-Frankowska et al, 2017) and autopsies (Domingo et al, 2017;Yoo et al, 2002). Variation in mercury concentrations among the three analysed individuals (L01, L06, and L07) may be explained by individual differences in ante-mortem exposure and accumulation.…”

Approaching mercury distribution in burial environment using PLS-R modelling

“…A fact that is in agreement with the recent finding that mercury can be stabilised in bioapatite as (Hg) 3 (PO 4 ) 2 27 . Furthermore, it could explain why mercury concentration in archaeological bones is higher than the concentration found in actual bones from autopsies and biopsies 53 , 54 —although lower contents in recent bone can also be due to lower exposure as today environmental loads are much more controlled. The higher the bone mass the higher the transfer of mercury to the soil.…”