Marie-Claire Cammaerts1* and Roger Cammaerts2
1Department of Pharmaceutics, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Anantapur, India
2Independent Researcher, Retired from the Natural and Agricultural Environmental Studies Department (DEMNA) of the Walloon Region, Belgium
*Corresponding Author: Marie-Claire Cammaerts, Independent Researcher, Retired from the Biology of Organisms Department, University of Brussels, Belgium.
Received: January 25, 2018; Published: February 10, 2018
Citation: Marie-Claire Cammaerts and Roger Cammaerts. “Some Physiological and Ethological Effects of Aluminum Hydroxide: A Study Using Ants as Models”. Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences 2.3 (2018).
Aluminum is largely present on the earth but has no biological function. Aluminum hydroxide is nowadays used in drugs for caring of persons suffering from stomach acidity, as an adjuvant in vaccines, in cosmetics and other products of common use, but has been suspected to have severe adverse effects. We thus examined its impact on 22 physiological and ethological traits, by using ants as models. We found that aluminum hydroxide decreased their meat consumption, general activity, linear speed, orientation ability, trail following, audacity, tactile perception, cognition, escaping ability and conditioning capability, thus their memory. It increased their sinuosity of movement and impacted their locomotion and movement coordination. It did not affect their relationship with their brood, nestmates and aliens. Ants did not adapt themselves to the adverse effects of aluminum hydroxide and developed no dependence on this compound. After weaning, the effects of aluminum hydroxide decreased linearly and fully vanished in a total of 12 hours. On basis of these results and of literature reports on motor and cognitive impairments in animals and humans we recommend limiting the use of aluminum hydroxide as much as possible, and to search for natural alternatives.
Keywords: Cognition; Locomotion; Memory; Straightforwardness; Tactile Perception
Copyright: © 2018 Marie-Claire Cammaerts and Roger Cammaerts. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.