BLEOMYCIN SENSITIVITY TEST IN THE EXPOSED AND REFERENCE HUMAN-POPULATIONS

Sensitivity to bleomycin was investigated in lymphocytes collected fro m three groups of males: 30 occupationally exposed cokery workers, 38 environmentally exposed Silesian citizen and 35 rural inhabitants. The data were analyzed at both the individual and group levels. The first analysis has revealed a substantial interindividual variability in th e level of generated breaks (breaks per cell, b/c). This variability w as independent of the age of the donor, smoking habit and X-ray exposu re as tested in the multiple regression model. The means per group for the occupationally and environmentally exposed persons were almost th e same with the values of 0.674 and 0.639, respectively. These two gro ups differed significantly from the rural population (b/c = 0.448, p < 0.001 by MANOVA). The reproducibility of the assay was satisfying (p > 0.49 by the Wilcoxon matched paired test) after omitting 7 out of 49 repeatedly sampled donors. Those persons exhibited extremely high b/c rates in the first sampling. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.