Evaluation of genotoxic damage in buccal mucosa cytome assays in Iraqi school children exposed to air pollutants emanating from oil fields

Is micronucleus assay in oral exfoliated cells a suitable tool for biomonitoring children exposed to environmental pollutants? A systematic review

“…The micronucleus test has demonstrated great sensitivity for evaluating the measurement of cytogenetic damage, especially in the potentially genotoxic effects of children, including the level of air pollution; environmental factors; airborne nanoparticles; systemic diseases; nutritional; dental materials; biomass burning; emissions from oil combustion; food contaminants (pesticides); and sources of ionizing radiation, which can vary between rural and urban environments (Gajski et al 2011(Gajski et al , 2013Nielsen et al 2013;Sabah 2021;Sisenando et al 2012). Therefore, this biological dosimetry technique is fundamental and useful for episodes of pediatric acute genotoxic exposure (Gajski et al 2011) since exposure to radiation generates reactive oxygen species in mammalian cells, which fatally damages genetic material in a dose-dependent fashion (Deckbar et al 2011).…”

“…The year 2021 was the most recent publication year found and 2012 the oldest. The order of countries that appeared with the most publications on the subject was Italy (Ceretti et al 2014(Ceretti et al , 2020De Donno et al 2016;Idolo et al 2018;Marcon et al 014;Panico et al 2020;Villarini et al 2018), Brazil (Alpire et al 2021;Cavalcante et al 2017;Fleck et al 2014;Silva et al 2015;Sisenando et al 2012), Malaysia (Chokeli et al 2019;Hisamuddin et al 2020;How et al 2014), Mexico (Anguiano-Vega et al 2020Gomez-Arroyo et al, 2013;López Guzmán et al 2017), Argentina (Bernardi et al 2015), and Iraq (Sabah 2021). The results of the characteristics of the included studies are shown in Table 1.…”

“…Of the 20 studies, 12 related to children exposed to air pollution (Cavalcante et al, 2017;Ceretti et al 2014Ceretti et al , 2020De Donno et al 2016;Fleck et al 2014;Hisamuddin et al 2020;Idolo et al 2018;Marcon et al 2014;Panico et al 2020;Sabah, 2021;Silva et al 2015;Sisenando et al, 2012); four reported exposures to pesticides (Anguiano-Vega et al 2020;Bernardi et al 2015;Gomez-Arroyo et al 2013;How et al 2014); two about lifestyle (Alpire et al 2021;Villarini et al 2018); and finally, one article researched exposure to arsenic (López Guzmán et al, 2017) and another to a mobile base station (Chokeli et al 2019). The youngest age found in the articles was 7 months while the oldest was 16 years.…”

“…Following the parameters of the Project for Effective Public Health Practices (EPHPP) and after extensive reading of all the articles included, a total of 12 articles (Alpire et al 2021;Anguiano-Vega et al 2020;Ceretti et al 2014Ceretti et al , 2020De Donno et al 2016;Gomez-Arroyo et al 2013;How et al 2014;Idolo et al 2018;Marcon et al 2014;Silva et al 2015;Sisenando et al 2012;Villarini et al 2018) had moderate and strong scores and others (Bernardi et al 2015;Castañeda-Yslas et al 2016;De Donno et al 2016;Gamiño-Gutiérrez et al, 2013;Sabah 2021) had a classification considered weak. The quality assessment of the selected studies is presented in Table 4.…”

“…There is a growing body of scientific evidence, which shows that children are exposed to several environmental pollutants, such as non-essential metals (lead and mercury), medicines, and air pollution (Bungau Prada et al, 2019;2021;Dórea, 2019;Nhung et al 2019;Kim et al, 2015;Ruggieri et al 2017). These contaminants induce some DNA injuries as, for example, double-strand breaks, DNA adducts, locus-specific changes in methylation in genes related to oxidative stress, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and being closely associated with telomere length shortening (Wu et al 2016;Yang et al 2017;Pampanin et al, 2017;Isaevska et al 2021).…”