Uptake of inorganic mercury by the human brain

Abstract

A 24-year-old man injected himself intravenously with metallic mercury in a suicide attempt, and died 5 months later after cutting his wrists. The brain was removed at postmortem and 7-μm paraffin sections were cut from representative blocks. Dense deposits of mercury were found on autometallography in large cortical motor neurons, but in no other cerebral neurons. Smaller mercury deposits were found in the brain stem (in the mesencephalic trigeminal nucleus, noradrenergic neurons, and in neurons for extraocular muscles), the cerebellum (in the dentate nucleus) and in lateral motor neurons in the C2/3 spinal cord. Mercury deposits were found in glial cells in all regions. The finding that elemental mercury enters human cortical motor neurons in preference to other cerebral neurons raises the possibility that this neurotoxin may play a part in the pathogenesis of some human motor neuron diseases.