Research Category:  

FY: 2005 Funding (in dollars): 91,000

Responsible Organization: AIR FORCE RESEARCH LAB/WRIGHT PATTERSON
Primary Contact: See Responsible Organization Information
City: Wright-Patterson AFB
State: OH
Zip: 45433-7902

Keywords: LABORATORY ANIMALS RAT ORAL TOXICITY OF N-ACETYL-1 CYSTEINE (NAC

Objective: This study will determine the harm in rats of daily oral exposure to large amounts of N-Acetyl-L Cysteine (NAC) for 30 consecutive days. NAC is a substance that has been shown to prevent toxicity and sickness as a result of chemical exposure or exposure to a virus.

Approach: Animals will be orally dosed to high concentrations of Body weights and temperatures will be taken on a daily basis N-Acetyl-L Cysteine (NAC) for 30 consecutive days. Each day, the rats will be watched for behavior indicating that they are sick; rats that act sick will be noted and possibly sacrificed if their symptoms are severe. At the end of the experiment, all animals still alive will be sacrificed, necropsied, and their organs will be looked at for changes in color or shape that might indicate harm caused by daily exposure to NAC. Some animals will be anesthetized with CO2 gas and exsanguinated and blood samples analyzed to help determine whether NAC causes problems in the cells that circulate in the blood. A second set of rats will be fed large amounts of radio-labeled NAC and sacrificed at 30 minutes, 1, 4, 6, 12, and 25 hours after being fed radio-labeled NAC. Both the blood and major organs will be removed from these animals and the amount of radioactivity present in these tissues will be determined. The amounts of radioactivity present in tissues will be used as a marker for the relative amounts of NAC taken up or present in the tissues. Urine and feces will be collected from select animals still living at 1, 4, 12, and 24 hours after being given radio-labeled NAC to help determine the amounts of NAC that are released by these routes of excretion over 24 hours.