The In Vitro Effect of b-Carotene and Mitomycin C on SCE Frequency in Down's Syndrome Lymphocyte Cultures
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FİLİZ BAL, FERİDE İFFET ŞAHİN, MERAL YİRMİBES, AYŞE BALCI and SEVDA MENEVŞE
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Department of Medical Biology and Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
Down's syndrome (DS) has the highest incidence among chromosomal disorders and is a predisposing factor in acute leukemia pathogenesis. DS patients are sensitive to both physical and chemical inducers at the DNA level. Studies on b-carotene, an antioxidant, suggested that there is a relationship between high b-carotene diet and reduced tumor incidence in humans indicating that b-carotene is a chemopreventive agent against cancer. Sister chromatid exchange (SCE) is known as a sensitive parameter among the genotoxicity tests. In this study, we aimed to investigate the in vitro effect of b-carotene on SCE frequencies in 7 DS patients and 7 healthy controls aged between 0-16 years. A direct leukomogenic agent Mitomycin-C (MMC) was used as a powerful SCE inducer. Addition of MMC to the cultures alone resulted in a significant enhancement of SCE frequencies in both groups when compared to the spontaneous values. In the study, b-carotene seemed to decrease MMC induced mean SCE/cell values, but did not have an effect on unstimulated cells. As this is a limited study, it is hard to conclude that b-carotene is a chemopreventive agent in DS patients, although our results seem to support other investigators' reports.
Key words---
Down's syndrome; sister chromatid exchange; mitomycin C; b-carotene
© 1998 Tohoku University Medical Press
Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 1998, 184, 295-300
Address for reprints:
Prof. Dr. Sevda Menevşe, Gazi University Medical Faculty, Department of Medical Biology and Genetics, Beşevler 06510, Ankara, Turkey.
e-mail: madnan@behcet.tip.gazi.edu.tr
This work has been presented as a poster in VIII Biennial Meeting International Society for Free Radical Research, Barcelona, Spain in 1-5 October 1996.
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