title: Molecular biomonitoring of a population of nurses handling antineoplastic drugs.
abstract: Many antineoplastic drugs have been found to have carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic activity and so hospital personnel handling these substances are potentially exposed to health risk. Understanding this risk derived from protracted occupational exposure has great relevance even if the workers normally adopt individual and environmental protective measures. To address this question we have studied the presence of DNA and chromosome damage in a population of nurses employed in Italian oncology units and in matched controls. We used the comet assay to evidence the presence of DNA strand breaks, due to both acute and chronic exposure, and the micronucleus (MN) test, which is a measure of clastogenic and aneugenic events. Furthermore, since the individual response to the exogenous insults may be genetically determined, we studied the possible influence of single nucleotide polymorphism in XRCC1 and XRCC3 DNA repair genes on induced genetic damage. We also considered the effects of confounding factors like smoking, age and gender. The results indicated that the exposed subjects had significantly high levels of genetic damage. Age and gender were associated with increased values in MN, both in control and in exposed groups; the smoking habit affects MN frequency in controls, but not in workers. Furthermore we found that exposed subjects bearing at least one XRCC1 variant allele (399Gln) show higher values of MN. The present data provide the evidence to show that occupational exposure to antineoplastic drugs, even if in safety controlled conditions, represents a serious health risk. Furthermore we have shown that the presence of XRCC1 genetic polymorphism could contribute to increase the genetic damage in susceptible individuals who are occupationally exposed to dangerous substances.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Roma Tre University, Viale Guglielmo Marconi, 446-00146 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Tommaso
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Cornetta
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Padua
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Testa
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ievoli
authors.forename: Fabiola
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Festa
authors.forename: Giovanna
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tranfo
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Baccelliere
authors.forename: Renata
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cozzi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000633:toxicity*; D020552:Comet Assay; D004249:DNA Damage; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D015162:Micronucleus Tests; D008875:Middle Aged; D009154:Mutation; D009726:Nurses; D009738:Nursing Service, Hospital; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D009859:Oncology Nursing; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D012306:Risk; D012737:Sex Factors; D012907:Smoking / Q000009:adverse effects; D000076105:X-ray Repair Cross Complementing Protein 1; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D000076105:X-ray Repair Cross Complementing Protein 1; C110901:X-ray repair cross complementing protein 3