The effect of an individual's blood pressure on the percentage of total 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene metabolites that bind covalently to DNA in cultured resting lymphocytes

A method for the quantitative analysis of the percent metabolism that results in covalent binding of 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA) to DNA in viable resting human lymphocytes is described. The inter- and intra-experimental reproducibility as judged by the coefficient of variation and examined in the same individual over a 3-month period was 31.4% and 13.9%, respectively. When the lymphocytes from 30 hypertensive individuals were exposed to 1 microM DMBA for 18 h, the percent of total DMBA metabolites that bind DNA covalently was correlated to the blood pressures of the patients at the time of sampling (r = 0.53, P less than 0.005). No influences on the data from the type or duration of hypertensive drug treatment could be statistically determined for this sample of hypertensive patients. It was concluded that high blood pressure is a strong determinant in predisposing lymphocytes to increased genetic risk from induced DNA damage and that this relationship is not statistically affected by hypertensive drug therapy.