Gene expression profiling reveals potential key pathways involved in pyrazinamide-mediated hepatotoxicity in Wistar rats.

Pyrazinamide (PZA) is an important sterilizing prodrug that shortens the duration of tuberculosis therapy. However, hepatotoxicity has been reported during clinical trials investigating PZA. To determine the hepatotoxic effects of PZA in vivo and to further investigate the underlying cellular mechanism, we profiled the gene expression patterns of PZA-treated rat livers by microarray analysis. Wistar rats of both sexes were orally administered PZA at doses of 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 g kg(-1) for 28 days. Body weight, absolute and relative liver weight, biochemical analysis, histopathology, oxidative stress parameters in liver homogenates and changes in global transcriptomic expression were evaluated to study the hepatotoxic effects of PZA. Our results confirm the dose-dependent and sex-related hepatotoxicity of PZA. Female rats were more sensitive to PZA-induced hepatotoxicity than males. Furthermore, changes in the activity of major antioxidant enzymes and nonenzymatic antioxidants (superoxide dismutase, total antioxidant capacity, glutathione and malondialdehyde), indicating the development of oxidative stress, were more significant in the PZA-treated group. PZA-induced gene expression changes were related to pathways involved in drug metabolism, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) signaling, oxidative stress and apoptosis. Real-time polymerase chain reaction confirmed the regulation of selected genes involved in PZA-hepatotoxicity (Ephx1, Cyp2b1, Gstm1, Gstp1, Fabp7, Acaa1, Cpt-1b, Cyp8b1, Hmox1 and Ntrk1). We observed for the first time that these genes have effects on PZA-induced hepatotoxicity. In addition, drug metabolism and PPAR signaling pathways may play an important role in PZA hepatotoxicity. Taken together, these findings will be useful for future PZA hepatotoxicity studies.