Assessment of association between glutathione levels, total antioxidant capacity and dna damage in a group of anaesthesia personnel chronically exposed to waste anaesthetic gases

There is an increase in the number of studies which discusses the mutagenic and genotoxic effects of inhalation anaesthetics. IARC has considered the carcinogenicity classification of inhalation anaesthetics in the group of 3 (not classifiable as to carcinogenicity to humans). In this study the quantitative measurement of DNA damage; tail length(TL), intensity(TI), and moment(TM), total antioxidant capacity(TAC), and reduced glutathione levels(GSH) of 31 women and 9 men anaesthesia personnel working in similar operating theatre conditions generally exposed to inhalation anaesthetics such as nitrous oxide, isoflurane, sevoflurane, desflurane were measured as well as in an age-matched control group comprised of 40 volunteer healthy workers without occupational exposure to inhalation anaesthetics . ?TL,TI,TM? parameters determined by the comet image analysing technique in the peripheral blood lymphocytes of the exposed group showed a statistically significant increase comparing to those of the control group(p<0,001), identifying that this disparity did not change in accordance with smoking habits. It was demonstrated that TAC (1,16±0,45) of exposed group was statistical significantly lower than that (0,66±0,31) of the control group. As far as their GSH was concerned, despite the 1,29±0,29 GSH levels of the control group, it was established that the group exposed to inhalation anaesthetics had 1,08±0,33 GSH levels(p<0,05), and was statistical significantly lower than that of control group. It was observed that smoking habit did not have an effect on the TAC and GSH levels. The results achieved in this study reveal that occupational exposure to inhalation anaesthetics could have an impact on health risk. Key Words Waste anaesthetic gases . Comet assay . DNA damage . total antioxidant capacity .