Mercury has been a major environmental and occupational risk and it still remains a problem for human health in the Amazon region. Although studies have shown that mercury affects various tissues and organs, kidneys are the target organs to the metal toxicity. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of chronic exposure to low doses of methylmercury on renal parenchyma of Cebusapella, adult males exposed during 120 consecutive days with daily oral doses of 1.5 μg in the diet. The concentrations of total mercury in the animals’ blood were monitored every 30 days using a cold vapor atomic spectrophotometer (201 Hg), compared to the control group. The method used for histopathological analysis was the immersion in paraffin for staining with hematoxylin and Eosin, Masson's CAB and PAS. The immunohistochemical investigations included reactions for detection of smooth muscle actin ( IA4 ), muscle actin ( HHF35 ) and cytokeratin (AE1 and AE2). The results showed that treatment with mercury caused significant differences (P < 0.001) between the exposed and control groups. As for total Hg levels, histopathologicalchanges just likehydrops in Proximal tubuleswere observed, a common finding in methylmercury exposure in other species, with no significant changes in creatinine and urea concentrations. The Person correlation test showed a strong negative relationship between mercury concentration and animal body weight loss (P < 0.0001). Another important finding was the decrease in mesangial cells number, which suggests that methylmercury executed its nephrotoxicity, affecting not only the renal tubular system, as well as the glomerular mesangium cells, making necessary a greater amount of experimental studies to clarify which mercury concentration alert level is capable of triggering aggression mechanisms and kidney injury in subjects exposed to methylmercury.
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