| Summary: | Environmental contaminants are suspected to have detrimental effects on marine mammal health. They were notably hypothesised to be involved in the severity and extent of catastrophic viral epidemics that recently affected the harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) population from the North Sea. High levels were indeed found in their tissues. However, the exact effects of those pollutants on free-ranging harbour seal health are not yet elucidated. In the field of immunotoxicology, in vitro cell culture techniques have been developed and are considered as valuable tools to assess specific toxicity mechanisms. The first objective of this study was to investigate the relationships between environmental contaminant levels found in harbour seal blood and lymphocyte proliferation responses in vitro. Indeed, wild harbour seal cells used in the framework of in vitro culture studies are isolated from the blood of animals that are contaminated, but little is known about the possible relationships between them. They were thus investigated in harbour seals from the North Sea. Peripheral blood leucocytes were isolated and cultured during 72h with Concanavalin A (ConA), a mitogen agent, to evaluate the lymphocyte proliferative responses as a stimulation index. The ConA-induced lymphocyte proliferation assay evaluates their ability to proliferate in response to a polyclonal stimulation, which is considered to reflect the activation of the immune response after an antigenic stimulation in vivo. No statistically significant relationship was found between the lymphocyte stimulation index and blood pollutants or class of pollutants studied (i.e. mercury, lead, persistent organic pollutants, pentachlorophenol, tribromoanisole) in harbour seals sampled while in good body condition and presenting no sign of disease. However, the number of lymphocytes per milliliter of whole blood appeared to be negatively correlated to pentachlorophenol, an organochlorine pesticide. A high interindividual variability of lymphocyte stimulation indexes was ...
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