Elevated frequencies of hprt mutant lymphocytes in cigarette-smoking mothers and their newborns

Assessment of 1,3-Butadiene Exposure in Polymer Production Workers Using HPRT Mutations in Lymphocytes as a Biomarker

“…This difference was also highly statistically significant (p < 0.0002 by t-test and p < 0.0001 by the Wilcoxon test). When stratified by smoking status, which is known to affect HPRT Vf (27)(28)(29), there was a highly significant difference between the 19 nonsmokers in the high-exposure areas and 20 nonsmokers in the low-exposure areas (p < 0.0005). Tobacco smokers were identified by both questionnaire data and plasma cotinine levels > 20 ng/mL.…”

“…Several factors have the potential to bias the results of the study, particularly with respect to the mutation biomarker. The two best characterized influences on the frequencies of HPRT mutants are smoking (24,27,29) and age (29,32). In earlier studies, smoking increased the HPRT Vf about 3-fold over the background rate.…”

Identification of Needs in Biomarker Research

“…Much early work has been done with populations of patients exposed to toxic drugs or with volunteers who smoke cigarettes (10,12). Although such populations have been helpful, access to populations with well-documented exposures to toxic chemicals in the workplace are vitally needed to characterize biomarker assays.…”

Future research directions to characterize environmental mutagens in highly polluted area

“…Recently, Albertini et al (26) and Ammenheuser et al (27) indicated the effect of transplacental transfer from smoking mothers, as well as the effect of social environment, but studies of the relationship between HPRT mutations and measured environmental exposure are still to be done (28 A new method of evaluating DNA repair is the comet assay. Green et al (8) observed the effect of diet and vitamin C on DNA single-strand breaks.…”