The Teplice area in the Czech Republic is a mining district where elevated levels of air pollution including airborne carcinogens, have been demonstrated, especially during winter time. This environmental exposure can impact human health; in particular children may be more vulnerable. To study the impact of air pollution in children at the transcriptional level, peripheral blood cells were subj...

During binary fission intranuclear spindles are formed in the three micronuclei and in the macronucleus. The nuclear envelopes remain intact throughout nuclear division. At one stage all the nuclei are linked together by the formation of membrane bridges in continuity with the outer membranes of their envelopes. Three types of filamentous structure have been distinguished in the spindles: micro...

The micronucleus test is a well-established DNA damage assay in human monitoring. The test was proposed as a promising marker of cancer risk/susceptibility mainly on the basis of studies on breast cancer. Our recent meta-analysis showed that the association between micronuclei frequency, either at baseline or after irradiation, and breast cancer risk or susceptibility, has been evaluated in few...

We investigated the effect of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors, pravastatin and fluvastatin, on the induction of micronuclei by ionizing radiation or bleomycin in Chinese hamster ovary cells in order to assess the radical-scavenging ability of these inhibitors. The results indicated that both pravastatin and fluvastatin had no effect on the induction of micro...

The biological dosimetry is widely used to estimate the absorbed dose in people occupationally or accidentally exposed to the radiation for a better medical treatment, minimizing the harmful effects. Many techniques and methods have been proposed to detect and quantify the radioinduced lesions in genetic material, among them, the micronucleus (MN) assay. In the present study, we proposed an imp...

Aim: Evaluation of nuclear anomalies in exfoliated buccal epithelial cells of petrol station attendants and oral squamous cell carcinoma patients. Materials and methods: Study was carried out on 60 subjects. 20 petrol pump attendants, 20-squamous cell carcinoma patients and 20 healthy subjects. They were asked questions regarding their life style and personal factors (age, duration of working i...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE Pap smears are the most common and inexpensive screening method for cervical cancer. We analyzed micronucleus prevalence in exfoliated cervical mucosa cells, to investigate associations between increased numbers of micronuclei and risk factors for cervical cancer. DESIGN AND SETTING Analytical cross-sectional study, at Instituto de Pesquisa em Oncologia (IPON). METHODS...

Normal human fibroblasts in plateau phase ( congruent with 95% G(1) phase) were stained with the vital nuclear dye Hoechst 33342 (blue fluorescence) or the vital cytoplasmic dye Cell Tracker Orange (orange fluorescence) and plated at a ratio of 1:1. Only the blue-fluorescing nuclei were microbeam-irradiated with a defined number of 90 keV/microm alpha particles. The orange-fluorescing cells wer...

The effects of DEHP on sperm morphology and on peripheral blood micronuclei were studied for 12 weeks following five subacute IP injections of DEHP at 1/6, 1/12, and 1/60 of the LD50 per day. Sperm morphology was examined in both adult mice and rats, while peripheral blood micronuclei were scored in mice up to 4 weeks after treatment. In mice, DEHP at 1/6 LD50 significantly depressed body weigh...

Nuclear differentiation in exconjugants of Paramecium caudatum is closely associated with a brief localization of the postzygotic nuclei near the opposite ends of the cell, with the germinal nucleus (micronucleus) in the anterior region and the somatic nuclei (macronuclei) in the posterior region. The posterior nuclei cannot regenerate to produce micronuclei when all four anterior nuclei are re...