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Urinary mutagens and lifestyle factors
K Mure1, T Takeshita, T Takeuchi
1Department of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, Osaka University School of Medicine, Japan.
Preventive Medicine
|September 1, 1996
Summary
Healthy lifestyle choices significantly lower urinary mutagen levels, indicating reduced exposure to environmental carcinogens and potentially decreasing cancer risk. Good health practices are key to mitigating mutagen exposure.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Health
- Toxicology
- Cancer Epidemiology
Background:
- Lifestyle significantly influences exposure to environmental carcinogens and mutagens.
- Urinary mutagen levels serve as a biomarker for exposure dose and metabolic processing of these agents.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between diverse lifestyle factors and urinary mutagen concentrations.
- To understand how health practices impact the body's burden of mutagens.
Main Methods:
- Collected 24-hour urine samples from 69 males.
- Utilized blue rayon extraction and carboxymethyl cellulose column chromatography for fractionation.
- Assessed mutagen levels using the Salmonella mutagenicity assay (Ames test) with S9 activation.
- Categorized subjects based on a health practices questionnaire (smoking, alcohol, nutrition, sleep, exercise, stress, etc.).
Main Results:
- Individuals with "good" health practices exhibited significantly lower urinary mutagen levels across all fractions compared to those with "poor" practices.
- Cigarette smoking and nutritional balance demonstrated the strongest correlations with urinary mutagen levels.
- Both acid- and alkali-elutable fractions showed reduced mutagenicity in subjects with healthier lifestyles.
Conclusions:
- Poor health practices are linked to elevated urinary mutagen levels.
- Adopting a healthy lifestyle may effectively reduce exposure to carcinogens and mutagens.
- These findings suggest that lifestyle modification can play a crucial role in cancer risk reduction.