Fluoride: interaction with chemical mutagens in Drosophila

Simultaneous feeding of sodium fluoride and some chemical mutagens to Drosophila has been reported to reduce the yield of induced mutations compared with feeding the mutagens alone. This observation has been interpreted as a genuine case of antimutagenesis in which fluoride specifically inhibits the induction of chromosome breaks. An alternative hypothesis is that the presence of fluoride inhibits the uptake of the mutagen solutions, producing the same effect as an antimutagen, but for a trivial reason. We have tested this hypothesis using radioactive labelled sucrose to measure the uptake of test solutions. The results show that differential uptake can account for the "antimutagenic" effects reported in Drosophila. Comparison of recessive lethal frequencies induced by Trenimon and PDT do not support the hypothesis that fluoride has any genuine antimutagenic action. Antimutagenic effects of fluoride have been reported in other systems. We cannot exclude the possibility of some genuine effects but we consider that these reports should be critically re-examined in the light of our present findings.