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Short Communication |
1 Laboratorium voor Cellulaire Genetica and 2 Laboratorium voor Antropogenetica, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; 3 Université catholique de Louvain, Unité de Toxicologie industrielle et Médecine du Travail, Brussels, Belgium; 4 Errol Zeiger Consulting, Road Chapel Hill, North Carolina; 5 Unit of Molecular Epidemiology, National Cancer Research Institute, Genoa, Italy; 6 School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California; 7 Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Yang Ming University Medical School, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China; 8 Laboratorium voor Arbeidshygiëne en-Toxicologie, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; 9 Department of Public Health, Yamagata University Graduate School of Medicine, Yamagata, Japan; 10 Unidad de Toxicologia, Dpto. De Psicologia, Universidade da A Coruña, Edificio de Servicios Centrales de Investigación, A Coruña, Spain; 11 Grup de Mutagènesi, Departament de Genètica i de Microbiologia, Facultat de Ciènces, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain; 12 Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Uomo e dell' Ambiente e del Territorio, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy; 13 Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Toxicology, Department of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland; 14 NIH, Environmental Health and Toxicology Department, Porto, Portugal; 15 Instituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy; and 16 CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Requests for reprints: Micheline Kirsch-Volders, Laboratory of Cell Genetics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. Phone: 322-629-34-23; Fax: 322-629-27-59. E-mail: mkirschv{at}vub.ac.be
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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The number of published articles measuring micronuclei in human populations has dramatically increased in the last decades (8), and the assay has been very successful despite a certain extent of heterogeneity in the laboratory protocol and especially in the scoring criteria. In recent years, international efforts, such as the Human Micronucleus project (http://www.humn.org), contributed to improve the reliability of the assay, providing guidelines on scoring criteria and analyzing major sources of variability (5, 9-12).
Many studies have been done to investigate the effect of occupational mutagens on micronucleus frequency, but only a few of them have considered the effect of genetic polymorphisms of genes involved in the metabolism of mutagens. The major difficulty in the design of these studies, especially for rare polymorphisms, is the large population size required. To overcome this limitation, pooled analyses are a powerful tool, and recent literature has specifically addressed this issue (13).
The aim of the present study was to determine through the pooled analysis of a large number of individuals genotyped for GSTM1 and GSTT1 the influence of these common polymorphisms on micronucleus frequency in peripheral blood lymphocytes of the general population and of groups occupationally exposed to known or suspected genotoxic substances.
| Materials and Methods |
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Individual characteristics of subjects included in the analysis (e.g., age, gender, smoking status, presence of disease, exposure to genotoxic agents, laboratory protocols for genotyping and the micronucleus assay, scoring criteria, and micronucleus frequency) were collected from the participating laboratories through a detailed questionnaire adapted from a previous Human Micronucleus project (12). Age ranged from 16 to 64 years (mean = 39.1 years; SD = 9.4 years) in the nonoccupationally exposed population and from 18 to 64 years (mean = 39.0 years; SD = 9.8 years) in the occupationally exposed population and was comparable for males and females. All individuals examined were Caucasians. Information on alcohol consumption and diet was not available for all studies and, when collected, was too heterogeneous to allow correct standardization in the pooled analysis. Therefore, it was not included in the present study.
Statistical Methods
The influence of genotype, age, gender, exposure status, and smoking status on the frequencies of micronucleated cells per 1,000 binucleated cells was determined using Poisson regression analysis (13). A scale variable was introduced into the model to account for overdispersion. To take interlaboratory variation into account, a mixed regression model was used; therefore, normalization of interlaboratory data was not necessary (23, 24). The model included genotype, gender, exposure (occupationally exposed or nonoccupationally exposed), and smoking (classified as smoker or nonsmoker) as fixed factors; age as a continuous covariate; and a term for each study as a random factor. All possible two-way interactions among genotypes, age, gender, exposure, or smoking were tested. In the presence of significant interaction terms, main effects were kept in the model even when not significant.
All analyses were first done in the total population and thereafter stratified by occupational exposure. Frequency ratio (FR), its 95% confidence interval (95% CI), and the corresponding P-values were estimated. For categorical variables, the FR indicates the proportional increase of the micronucleus frequency in the study group; for example, a FR of 1.21 for females versus males means a 21% increase of micronucleus frequency in females. For continuous variables, the FR represents the proportional increase of micronucleus frequency due to the increase of one unit of the variable evaluated; for example, a FR for age of 1.02 means a 2% increase of micronucleus frequency per year of age. The statistical analyses were carried out using statistical routines developed in R version 2.2.0. (http://www.r-project.org/).
| Results |
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0.001), whereas no such association was observed in the occupationally exposed group (P = 0.8). The age-dependent influence of GSTT1 genotype on the micronucleus frequencies was found only for the occupationally exposed group (P = 0.048). In addition, occupationally exposed subjects carrying both GSTM1 and GSTT1 null genotypes showed lower micronucleus frequencies than their positive counterparts (FR, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.53-0.98). | Discussion |
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Glutathinone S-transferases (GSTs) are considered primarily detoxification enzymes, although metabolic activation involving GST-mediated glutathione conjugation has also been described (e.g., for some chlorinated substrates; ref. 22). Detoxification by glutathione conjugation can represent a minor (e.g., styrene oxide) or a major (e.g., smoking) metabolic pathway for many genotoxic agents.
The results of this study suggest that the circumstances in which the GSTM1 and/or GSTT1 null genotype modifies micronucleus frequencies depend on the presence of exposure to mutagens and on age. GSTM1 operates in the detoxification of several compounds, such as benzo(
)pyrene and styrene-7,8-oxide, that produce bulky adducts, but does not have a high affinity for substrates resulting from free radical attack on lipid or DNA (25-28). GSTT1 catalyzes the conjugation of relatively small molecules, such as methylene chloride, ethylene dibromide, and the epoxides derived from isoprene (29). Given the importance of GSTs in the detoxification of electrophilic carcinogens, GSTM1 and GSTT1 null genotypes have become the object of much research because homozygous deletions of GSTM1 and GSTT1 are expected to result in an impaired ability to detoxify carcinogenic compounds and may place GSTM1 and/or GSTT1 null individuals at increased cancer risk (30).
In our study, the GSTT1 null genotype was associated with a significantly lower level of micronucleated cells in the total population; interestingly, the protective effect of the GSTT1 null genotype was reversed in older-age classes in occupationally exposed subjects and in the total population. The effect of the GSTM1 null genotype on micronucleus frequencies was small and only borderline significant. However, subjects carrying both GSTM1 and GSTT1 null genotypes showed lower micronucleus frequencies than their positive counterparts when coexposed to occupational genotoxins (P = 0.039).
To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first one to report about decreased frequencies of micronuclei in GSTT1 null individuals. However, a decreased micronucleus frequency in GSTM1 null subjects was already described by Falck et al. (22) in pesticide-exposed and unexposed floriculturists. Moreover, in a recent review, Parl (30) noted that the relative risk of breast cancer for Caucasian women with the GSTM1+/+ genotype compared with women with the GSTM1/ genotype was 2.82 (31). As an explanation for this result, he suggested that the combined conjugation activities of all GSTs may lead to glutathione depletion and thereby become counterproductive. Similar considerations may also apply for GSTT1 null individuals. Whether chronic exposure to relatively low levels of genotoxins as encountered in the studied occupational settings could lead to depletion of the glutathione pool and explain the higher frequency of micronuclei in carriers of both GSTM1- and GSTT1-positive genotypes needs further investigation.
Another important finding of this analysis is the observation that women occupationally exposed to genotoxic agents are at higher risk for micronucleus induction than occupationally exposed males. This issue should be further addressed on a larger scale and for specific exposures to define adequate preventive measures in occupational settings.
The significantly lower frequency of micronuclei in nonoccupationally exposed smokers compared with nonsmokers reported in Tables 2 and 3 confirms the results of Bonassi et al. (9), who in a larger database of 3,501 subjects found a small decrease in micronuclei frequencies in current smokers (all smoking levels combined) among nonoccupationally exposed subjects (FR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.92-0.99). However, when stratifying by level of smoking, they also found a significant increase in micronuclei frequencies in nonoccupationally exposed heavy smokers (>30 cigarettes per day). In our study, smokers and nonsmokers showed comparable micronucleus levels when coexposed to occupational genotoxins, which might be the result of the combined exposure. Standardized information on the amount of smoking was not available for each study included in this pooled analysis, and we could therefore not stratify by smoking level.
In conclusion, the results of this pooled analysis indicate that GSTT1 null subjects had lower micronucleus frequencies than their positive counterparts in the total population. The individual data sets included in this pooled analysis revealed that the influence of GST genotype on micronucleus frequencies was statistically significant only in two (17, 19) of the eight studies and only for GSTM1. Our finding confirms that pooled analyses, by increasing the statistical power, are adequate for assessing the involvement of genetic variants on genome stability and for resolving discrepancies among individual studies.
| Acknowledgments |
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| Footnotes |
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The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
Note: M. Kirsch-Volders, R.A. Mateuca, M. Roelants, A. Tremp, E. Zeiger, S. Bonassi and M. Fenech are the main authors of the present article.
H. Norppa is the Coordinator of the Cancer Risk Biomarkers EU program on predictivity of cytogenetic biomarkers for cancer.
M. De Boeck, L. Godderis, V. Haufroid, B. Laffon, R. Marcos, L. Migliore, J. P. Teixeira, and A. Zijno contributed data to the pooled analysis.
M. De Boeck is currently at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development (a Division of Janssen Pharmaceutica n.v.), Genetic and In vitro Toxicology, Turnhoutseweg 30, B-2340 Beerse, Belgium.
17 L. Migliore, personal communication. ![]()
Received 7/ 6/05; revised 2/14/06; accepted 3/ 2/06.
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