Effects of smoking and aging on oxidative DNA damage of human lymphocytes

The effects of H2O2-induced oxidative DNA damage in 80 healthy individualswith relation to age (20-25 and 55-60 years old) and smoking has beeninvestigated with the comet assay technique. Both factors have shown asignificant effect upon basal DNA damage with smoking appearing to have themost impact. A differentiation of the four groups response to inducedoxidative damage was also observed. A distinctly separate behavior of theyounger non-smokers group, when compared with the rest of the categories,was found. This is attributed to the lower degree of initial basal damagethat occurs in their lymphocytes.