Genotoxic effects of anesthetics in operating room personnel evaluated by micronucleus test

Tânia Kawasaki De Araujo,Nilson Camargos Roso,Cristina Wide Pissetti,Flora Margarida Barra Bisinotto,Marly Aparecida Spadotto Balarin,Ricardo Manoel Da Cruz,Roseane Lopes Da Silva-Grecco

doi:10.7243/2049-9752-2-26

Tânia Kawasaki De Araujo, Nilson Camargos Roso + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7243/2049-9752-2-26

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Abstract

Exposure to certain chemical agents causes damage to the genetic material. There is controversy about the genotoxic and/or mutagenic effect caused by acute or chronic anesthetics exposure. The aim of this research was to assess and compare the frequency of micronuclei (MN) in professionals working in operating rooms and other hospital areas. The genotoxic and cytotoxic effects were evaluated in lymphocytes using the micronucleus test and the proliferative index, respectively. We examined peripheral blood lymphocyte cultures from 30 operating room professionals (exposed group) and 30 professionals non-exposed in other hospital areas of the same hospital (control group). There was no statistically significant difference in proliferative index between the groups. Nevertheless, there was an increase in MN frequency in binucleated (BN) cells in the exposed group (p=0.0003) compared to the control group. Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference between genders (p=0.0187), and the frequency of MN in BN cells from women was higher than in men. Therefore, gender influenced the frequency of MN. The age and period of working time in an operating room influenced the MN frequency only in women professionals. Thereby, there was a genotoxic effect in occupationally exposed professionals, and the micronucleus test could be used in the biomonitoring of human populations for evaluating the risk of developing cancer.

Highlights

Volatile anesthetics are the major pollutants in operating rooms, where the professionals are exposed to low doses of them, for long periods of time
The sample was composed of 32 women (53.3%) and 28 men (46.7%) professionals, 30 of which worked in operating rooms and 30 of which worked in other hospital areas, matched for gender and age
With regard to the nuclear division index (NDI), the mean and standard deviation in the exposed and control group were 1.68+0.25 and 1.69+0.21, respectively (p=0.9681). This data indicated that occupational exposure to the anesthetic gases did not have toxic effects on lymphocytes impairing their mitotic proliferation in vitro

Summary

Introduction

Volatile anesthetics are the major pollutants in operating rooms, where the professionals are exposed to low doses of them, for long periods of time. Neurotoxic [32], hepatotoxic [22], nephrotoxic [24,32] and carcinogenic effects [13,32,39], as well as fertility alterations, increased incidence of spontaneous abortions and congenital abnormalities have been observed in these professionals [3,24,41,45,46]. There is still some controversy regarding the genotoxic and/or mutagenic effects of acute or chronic exposure to anesthetic gases [14, 25,27], even though significant increases in the frequency of chromosome aberrations and of micronuclei (MN) in peripheral blood lymphocytes of professionals exposed to such agents have been reported [8,11,12,29,31,35,42,44]. The micronucleus test is a method for the assessment of several kinds of cytogenetic damages, used in the biomonitoring of human populations for evaluating the risk of developing cancer and identifying the genotoxic potential of chemical, physical and biological agents [1,31,35,42]. It was observed that MN in mononucleated (MO) cells, as well as proliferative index (PI), could provide complementary information, since these data may indicate damage that is present in vivo, before cell culture is set up, which makes them interesting for the purpose of biomonitoring [28,40]

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