Methods: Male rats received sodium fluoride in their drinking water (1 ppm – tap water; 50 ppm; 100 ppm) for 30 days. After this period, different groups of animals were tested in openfield habituation (two 5-min sessions 24 h apart) and in the twoway active avoidance (two sessions of 30 trials with 10-s of tone – conditioned stimulus – and 5-s of 0.3mA shock delivery – unconditioned stimulus – at final 5 s of CS). Food and water intake, body weight gain and dental fluorosis were also
In conclusion, a main finding of this study was that microglia BV-2 cells were activated by fluoride, and the increase of ROS and RNS in microglia was associated with the activation of microglia. The novelty of this work is related to the active role of microglia treated with fluoride. We provided new evidence from in vitro model indicating that fluoride exerts its toxic effects in CNS possibly partly ascribed to activating of microglia in vitro, which enhanced oxidative stress induced by ROS an
