Sister chromatid exchange in aged human lymphocytes. A brief note

A study of the sister chromatid exchange (SCE) frequency in peripheral lymphocytes from 26 human subjects, with in vivo age of the cells as the variable, demonstrated a significant increase in SCE frequency with increasing age of the subject (analysis of variance: p less than 0.01). The cells were cultured in Eagles' basal medium with 5-bromodeoxyuridine added to a final concentration of 10 microM. These results are contradictive to the brunt of the literature which indicates that background SCE frequency does not change with age.