Suppression of natural killer cell activity in harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) fed Baltic Sea herring

Mass mortalities among marine mammal populations in recent years have raised questions about a possible contributory role of contaminants accumulated through the marine food chain. While viruses were shown to be the primary cause of the outbreaks, an immunotoxic action by organochlorine chemicals in affected animals could not be ruled out. We carried out a 2 1/2-year immunotoxicological experiment in which two groups of 11 harbour seals each were fed herring from either the relatively contaminated Baltic Sea or the relatively uncontaminated Atlantic Ocean. Seals in the Baltic Sea group accumulated 3-4 times higher levels of Ah-receptor-mediated 2,3,7,8-TCDD Toxic Equivalents in blubber than did their Atlantic counterparts following 2 years on the respective diets. Blood was sampled a total of 17 times during the course of the experiment for immunological evaluation, during which time the natural cytotoxic activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells isolated from seals fed Baltic Sea herring declined to a level approximately 25% lower than that observed in seals fed Atlantic herring (P < 0.01). Natural killer (NK) cell activity has not been previously described for a marine mammal species. We characterized the natural cytotoxic activity of harbour seal peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), and found this to be interleukin-2 (IL-2) responsive, sensitive to antibody anti-asialo GM1, and it was higher against a virus-infected target cell, like NK cells described for other mammals. As NK cells are leukocytes which play an important role in the first line of defence against viruses, the observed impairment of NK cell activity in the seals feeding on the Baltic Sea herring suggests that exposure to contaminants may have an adverse effect on the defence against virus infections in seals inhabiting polluted waters in Europe. This may therefore have affected the severity of the infections, the survival rates and the spread of infections during recent epizootics.