2001 Volume 66 Issue 3 Pages 313-318
Chlorophyll and its derivatives are an example of vegetable compounds with protective action against DNA damage caused by chemical and physical agents. This study was carried out to assess the clastogenic and anticlastogenic action of chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and chlorophyll-b (Chl-b) on chromosome aberration induction by the mitomycin-C in lymphocyte cultures from human peripheral blood. Six young healthy individuals were used in the experimental protocol, and a negative control, positive control with mitomycin-C (MMC), solvent control with 0.0025% ethanol (SC), treatments with Chl-a and Chl-b at concentration in culture medium of 0.25 μg/ml and chlorophyll treatments associated with MMC (0.03 μg/ml of culture medium) were prepared for each individual. The total culture time was 72 h. The SC, Chl-a and Chl-b treatments were carried out at the beginning of the culture and the MMC treatment was 48 h after the start of culture. One hundred metaphases were analyzed in each culture. The treatments with Chl-a and Chl-b were not clastogenic. Chlorophyll associated with the aberration inducing agent (MMC) showed a protective effect against DNA damage due to the decrease in the number of cells with breaks (Chl-a reduction=64.6%, Chl-b reduction=56.9%). There was reduction mainly in the isochromatid type breaks (Chl-a reduction=82.7%, Chl-b reduction=79.3%) compared to the chromatid type (Chl-a reduction=55.8%, Chl-b reduction=44.2%). The anticlastogenic data obtained suggest that the molecule types used acted similarly with the same efficacy, mainly in the phases G1 and S of cell cycle, where chromosome breaks commonly occur.
