Protective behavior of captopril on Hg(++)-induced toxicity on kidney mitochondria. In vivo and in vitro experiments.

Mercurials are known to induce morphological and functional modifications in kidney mitochondria. In this work we studied in vitro and in vivo the protective effect of captopril on the deleterious effect of Hg(++)-induced nonspecific membrane permeability changes to Ca++ and membrane de-energization. In vivo the administration of captopril prevented the toxic effects of mercury poisoning on membrane permeability, oxidative phosphorylation and Ca++ homeostasis. Moreover, captopril preserves kidney tissue morphology from Hg(++)-induced damage. The protective effect of captopril is most likely related to the existence of a sulfhydryl group in the drug.