Micronucleus Score in the Buccal Mucosa of Women with Breast Cancer and the Relationship to Chemotherapy

Background: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women so many studies have be carried out about breast cancer chemotherapy. It is possible that breast cancer patients possess elevated chromosomal brekage/loss and MN formation in epithelial cells of the buccal smear and also the MN numbers may be increased in epithelial cells after chemotherapy in breast cancer patients. The objective of this study was to evaluate the MN scores in buccal smear compared to healthy women and women with breast cancer before and after chemotherapy.Materials and methods: This study included 32 healthy women and 24 breast cancer patients. The buccal smears of breast cancer patients were taken three times: before chemotherapy, and after two and four cycles of chemotherapy. Buccal smears of the control group and patients were taken, and 1000 epithelial cells were counted per patient, with the criteria of The Human Micronucleus Project for the assay of micronucleated cells.Results: The MN scores of breast cancer patients before chemotherapy, after 2 cycles chemotherapy and after 4 cycles chemotherapy were statistically significantly higher than the MN scores of the healthy control group (p<0.001).Conclusion: The MN scores were observed higher in breast cancer patients than in healthy individuals and also it increased with the application of chemotherapy.？ These results and our findings propose that the MN assay of buccal mucosa samples can be used to determine the genotoxic effect of chemotherapy.