Comparison of DNA repair capacity in mother-newborn daughter pairs.

For medical treatment or for assessment of health risk after exposure to mutagens/carcinogens children are in general considered as “small adults”. For prescription of drug concentrations, defining NOEL or accepting exposure limits do not take into account the fact that the efficacy of enzymes responsible for biotransformation, DNA replication and repair, cell cycle control and immune responses may be different in children as compared to adults. Therefore it is essential to assess the functional activity of enzymes at cellular level during the early months of life and the growth period. Our aim is to compare the genotoxic effects of two directly acting reference mutagens (EMS and H2O2) in mother and newborn daughter taking into account genotypes for three relevant repair polymorphisms: hOGG1326, XRCC1 codons 194, 280, 399 and XRCC3241) and the in vitro challenge strand break repair phenotype.
20 pairs of non-smoking mothers and newborn daughters (umbilical blood) will be studied for induction of DNA damage (Comet assay) and chromosome/genome mutations (in vitro cytochalasin-B micronucleus assay). This project is part of a EU network project (QLK4-CT-2002-02198. “CHILDGENET”) and aims at additional financial support.