Behavioral and biochemical changes in Wister albino rats exposed to different brands of vulcanizer solutions

Volatile solvents are liquids that vapourize at room temperature and are found in a multitude of inexpensive, easily available products used for common household and industrial purposes. There is an increased abuse of inhalants among the youths in Nigeria for the purpose of mind-alteration or getting high. Vulcanizer solutions are one of the widely used inhalants that lack proper labelling hence there may be adulteration of these substances which could also be dangerous to health of the sniffers. The objective of this research was to subject wistar albino rats to different brands of vulcanizer solutions to investigate the possible effects these solutions have on social behaviour as well as significant changes in the concentrations of some liver function enzymes. Commercial assay kit from Randox Laboratories Ltd was used for the determination of the enzymes of interest. The study found that only alanine aminotransferase (ALT) was significantly increased (P ˂ 0.05) and changes in behaviours on exposition to miliki diamond (MD) solutions were observed. Serum ALT, AST and ALP levels have been reported to increase than normal in various hepatocellular damages such as necrosis, hepatitis, etc. However, ALT is more specific for detection of hepatotoxicity, therefore its significant increase, when other enzymes do not increase, indicates that vulcanizer solutions (specifically MD) may contribute enormously to certain liver diseases. The changes in behaviours as well as enzyme concentration could be due to various chemicals constituents (such as benzene, toluene, ethyl, etc) in vulcanizer solutions. Therefore, sniffers of vulcanizer solutions may be highly susceptible to various diseases of the liver and other organs, and this may contribute enormously to the prevalence of liver diseases as being recently reported.