Abstract: Various efforts have been made in past in order to predict the
underlying mechanism of pesticide-induced toxicity using in vitro and
animal models, however, these predictions may or may not be directly correlated
with humans. The present study was designed to investigate the carbofuran
induced genotoxicity and its amelioration by vitamins C and E by treating human
peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) with different concentrations (0, 0.5,
1.25, 2.5, 3.75 and 5.0 μM) of this compound. The
treatment of PBLs with carbofuran displayed significant DNA damage in
concentration dependent manner. The carbofuran induced genotoxicity could be
ameliorated to considerable extent by pretreatment of PBLs with equimolar
(10 μM) concentration of each of the vitamins C and E;
the magnitude of protection by vitamin E being higher than by vitamin C. Also,
it was found that the level of protection by these vitamins was higher when
PBLs were treated with lower concentrations of pesticide. The significant DNA
damage as observed by H_{2}O_{2}, a
positive control in the present study, and its amelioration by natural
antioxidants (vitamins C and E) lend an evidence to suggest that carbofuran
would have caused genotoxicity via pesticide induced oxidative stress.
Keywords: Carbofuran, genotoxicity, comet assay, vitamin C, vitamin E, human lymphocytes
