Increased Micronuclei Frequency in Oral and Lingual Epithelium of Treated Diabetes Mellitus Patients

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disease characterized by persistent high levels of glucose in plasma. Chronic hyperglycemia is thought to increase oxidative stress and the formation of free radicals that in turn damage cells. Thus, we decided to determine the frequency of nuclear abnormalities in epithelial cells from cheek and tongue mucosa of DM patients with type 1 (DM1, treated only with insulin) and type 2 (DM2, treated with metformin) using the buccal micronucleus cytome (BMCyt) assay. Micronuclei frequency in cheek epithelial cells was higher in both DM1 (0.75 ± 0.31, P < 0.001) and DM2 (0.52 ± 0.27, P < 0.001) patients, as compared to healthy controls (0.07  ±  0.06). Similarly, micronuclei frequency in tongue epithelium was increased in DM1 (0.81  ±  0.22, P < 0.001) and DM2 (0.41  ±  0.21, P < 0.001) groups, in comparison to controls (0.06  ±  0.05). Besides, we found a positive correlation between micronuclei frequency and the onset time of DM2 in both cheek (ρ = 0.69, P < 0.001) and tongue epithelial cells (ρ = 0.71, P < 0.001), but not with onset time of DM1 or age of the patients. Considering all this, we pose that BMCyt could serve as a fast and easily accessible test to assess genotoxic damage during dental visits of DM patients, helping to monitor their disease.