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Bile fluorescence, heme oxygenase induction, and increased biliverdin excretion by mixtures of environmental toxicants.

The measurement of bile fluorescence has become a popular biomarker to demonstrate the exposure of fish to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Conflicting data has been published on how to normalize bile fluorescence. To investigate if normalization to biliverdin is a suitable method, experiments were performed to study the mechanisms related to biliverdin excretion in fish. In two separate experiments channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) were dosed with mixtures of benzo[a]pyrene with cadmium, chlorinated phenols or borneol. The results showed linear relationships between bile protein and biliverdin for each treatment group, but the slope of this relationship was significantly increased when fish received more chemical stress. Thus, under increasing toxicant stress, more biliverdin was excreted per amount of protein. To investigate if the increased biliverdin excretion was related to increased heme degradation, enzymatic activity of heme oxygenase (HO) was measured in liver homogenates of the dosed fish. The fish dosed with chemical mixtures had a significantly higher HO activity than the control fish, and in both experiments a significant correlation was observed between HO activity and biliverdin concentration in the bile. It is concluded that mixtures of environmental pollutants can induce HO activity and that this chemical stress leads to increased biliverdin excretion. The elucidation of this mechanistic pathway warrants that bile fluorescence should not be expressed per biliverdin absorption, and that expression per bile protein would be a more reliable method.