Mutation Frequency in Nurses and Pharmacists Working With Cytotoxic Drugs

Abstract

Individuals occupationally exposed to cytotoxic drugs may be at risk owing to the effects of these agents on DNA. As an index of DNA damage, in vivo mutations were measured in lymphocytes from 24 oncology nurses or pharmacists and 24 matched controls. Mutation frequency was significantly increased in exposed individuals and appeared to be related to duration of exposure. However, the overall magnitude of the increase was small and its biological significance remains to be determined.

Evaluation of genotoxic risk of handling cytostatic drugs in clinical pharmacy practice

“…Further, it should be emphasized that Vf values indicate a large interindividual variation and that the values in this study are a factor 5 to 6 higher then observed in other studies [22][23][24]. A possible explanation may be that in this study no adjustment for so-called 'phenocopies' was made.…”

Occupational health problems among nurses.

“…Nikula et al (40)disclosed that nurses with long-term exposure to cytostatic agents had significantly higher numbers of chromosome-type breaks in their lymphocytes as compared with a reference group of unexposed laboratory workers and hospital clerks (40). Another study involving 24 oncology nurses or pharmacists and an equal number of matched referents found that the frequency of in vivo mutations in lymphocytes was significantly increased in the former and appeared to be related to the duration of exposure (41). Such findings lend weight to the suspicion that these drugs pose a potential carcinogenic risk to exposed nurses.…”

Somatic mutations at the T-cell antigen receptor in antineoplastic drug-exposed populations: comparison with sister chromatid exchange frequency

“…Previous reports have shown a high frequency of mutations at these loci in patients receiving chemotherapy (Dempsey et al 1985;Bigbee et al 1990;Branda et al 1991;Hirota et al 1994) or radiation therapy (Messing and Bradley 1985;Kyoizumi et al 1992) for various malignancies. In addition, a signi®cant increase in mutation frequency was observed in oncology nurses and pharmacists handling antineoplastic agents by the means of the HPRT clonal assay (Chrisostomou et al 1984;Dubeau et al 1994). However, the routine application of these assays may be limited for several reasons.…”