Glycophorin A Is a Potential Biomarker for the Mutagenic Effects of Pesticides

Abstract

For individuals with multiple exposures to bone marrow mutagens the glycophorin A (GPA) assay appears to detect the cumulative genotoxic effects of these nonspecific exposures. To determine whether workers exposed to organophosphates and/or carbamate pesticides have more GPAvariants compared with controls, this cross-sectional cohort study examined 67 Latino farm workers, most of whom were exposed to organophosphate or carbamate pesticides, and 68 age-, gender-, ethnicity-, and education-matched reference subjects. Of the 27 participants who completed the questionnaire and had the M/N alleleotype required for the GPA assay, the N/N variant frequency was 9.1 × 10⁻⁶ in the ten subjects with more than 1,500 cumulative hours of exposure vs 3.8 × 10⁻⁶ in the six referent subjects with no known pesticide exposure (p = 0. 097). A consistent trend with increasing cumulative exposure was found for N/N and Ø/N allele-loss frequencies when exposures were stratified into three groups. Despite the small sample size due to the allele-type restriction, these findings support the hypothesis that some pesticides are mutagenic to hematopoietic stem cells.

Keywords:

• biomarker
• glycophorin A
• mutagen
• farm workers
• organophosphate pesticides