Genotoxic evaluation of terbinafine in human lymphocytes in vitro

Abstract

Terbinafine is an antimycotic drug usually used against several superficial fungal infections and with a potential application in the treatment of human cancers. Since to date there are few data on the genotoxic effects of terbinafine in mammalian cells, current study evaluated the potential genotoxic of such antifungal agent in cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes. Terbinafine was used at the peak plasma concentration (1.0 μg/ml) and in four additional concentrations higher than the human plasmatic peak (5.0 μg/ml, 25.0 μg/ml, 50.0 μg/ml and 100.0 μg/ml). Chromosomal aberrations (CA), sister chromatid exchanges (SCE), micronuclei (MN), nucleoplasmic bridges (NP) and nuclear buds (NB) were scored as genetic endpoints. In all analysis no significant differences (α = 0.05, Kruskal-Wallis test) were observed. Complementary criterion adopted to obtain the final response in cytogenetic agreed with statistical results. Therefore, results of this study showed that terbinafine neither induced CA, SCE, MN, NP and NB nor affected significantly mitotic, replication and cytokinesis-block proliferation indices in any of the tested concentrations. It may be assumed that terbinafine was not genotoxic or cytotoxic to cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes in our experimental conditions.

• Antifungal agent
• chromosomal aberrations
• micronuclei assay
• sister chromatid exchanges

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Fundação Araucária de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico do Paraná for financial support. Tolomeotti, D. was the recipient of a Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) fellowship. Sant’Anna, J.R. is the recipient of a Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) fellowship.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.