In vitro neurotoxicity study with dorsal root ganglia for acrylamide and its derivatives.

Acrylamide and 6 derivatives inhibited neurite growth from rat dorsal root ganglion in culture. The half-maximum inhibition concentration (I50) varied among test compounds, ranging from 0.8 mM for acrylamide and N-hydroxymethylacrylamide to 30 mM for methacrylamide. The value correlated well with the acute oral LD50 for rats, the linear regression equation being I50 = 2.74LD50-6.52 (r = 0.897, P less than 0.05), but did not correlate with in vivo neurotoxicity for mice. Log (1/I50) was a linear function of the rate constant with glutathione (K), i.e. log (1/I50) = 0.828logK + 0.056 (r = 0.938, P less than 0.05).