Department of Toxicology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Ankara University, Turkey.
Arch Toxicol. 2012 Jan;86(1):27-35. doi: 10.1007/s00204-011-0743-9. Epub 2011 Aug 11.
An extension of a male reproductive study conducted in a boric acid/borate production zone at Bandırma, Turkey, is presented. The relation between DNA-strand breaks (COMET assay, neutral and alkaline version) in sperm cells and previously described sperm quality parameters was investigated in boron-exposed males. A correlation between blood boron levels and mean DNA-strand breaks in sperm was weak, and DNA-strand breaks in sperm were statistically not different between control and exposed groups. Therefore, increasing boron exposures had no additional contribution in addition to already pre-existing DNA-strand breaks in the sperm cells. Weak but statistically significant correlations between DNA-strand breaks and motility/morphology parameters of sperm samples were observed in the neutral version of the COMET assay, while correlations between the same variables were statistically not significant in the alkaline version. A likely reason for these negative results, even in highly exposed humans, is that experimental exposures that had led to reproductive toxicity in animals were significantly higher than any boron exposures, which may be reached under realistic human conditions.
本文介绍了在土耳其班德尔马的硼酸/硼酸盐生产区进行的一项男性生殖研究的扩展。研究了暴露于硼的男性的精子细胞中的 DNA 链断裂（彗星试验，中性和碱性版本）与先前描述的精子质量参数之间的关系。血液硼水平与精子中平均 DNA 链断裂之间的相关性较弱，并且暴露组和对照组之间的精子 DNA 链断裂在统计学上没有差异。因此，除了精子细胞中已经存在的 DNA 链断裂之外，增加硼暴露并没有额外的贡献。在中性版本的彗星试验中观察到 DNA 链断裂与精子活力/形态参数之间的弱但具有统计学意义的相关性，而在碱性版本中相同变量之间的相关性在统计学上没有意义。即使在高度暴露的人群中，这些阴性结果的一个可能原因是，导致动物生殖毒性的实验暴露明显高于任何可能在现实人类条件下达到的硼暴露。
