Optimization of the alkaline comet assay for easy repair capacity quantification of oxidative DNA damage in PBMC from human volunteers using aphidicolin block.

Assessment of DNA repair capacity (DRC) upon ex vivo challenge of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) with oxidative damage inducing agents, as evaluated by the comet assay, is widely used as biomarker to assess the antioxidant status in human studies. Here, the alkaline comet assay was now optimized for easy and time saving detection of repair capacity upon oxidative stress-induced DNA damage using the DNA polymerase inhibitor aphidicolin (APC) to block repair of hydrogen peroxide (HO) induced DNA damage. Addition of a DMSO-containing DNA damage stop solution was found suitable to replace washing steps for HO removal before APC block. Cell treatment with APC at 6 μM did not impact baseline DNA damage but could reliably block DNA repair after HO challenge in both fresh and cryopreserved samples thus omitting the use of a starting time point control. Under the conditions used, frozen cells, with or without an additional 4 h rest, showed the same repair capacity as their fresh counterpart. The intra assay coefficient of variation (CV) was 3.3%. To provide proof of principle, the modified assay was applied to cryopreserved PBMC from 19 participants of a short-term Brassica diet intervention study investigating potential health promoting effects of the food intervention. Then, a 33% increase in DRC (p ≤ 0.01) could be shown in samples after intervention (mean ± SD: 5.82 ± 1) as compared to baseline (mean ± SD: 4.38 ± 1.21). Individual samples from baseline and intervention showed an inter-individual CV of 27.65% (baseline) and 17.26% (intervention). Taken together this modified comet assay protocol allows the facilitated detection of DNA repair in fresh or cryopreserved human PBMC samples with a good sensitivity and reliability and could be useful in human studies addressing the antioxidant status and repair capacity of PBMC.