Abstract

Introduction: The invention and use of antibiotics in treating infections is one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century medicine. Antibiotics are one of the categories of pharmaceuticals with a broad and increasing application. Goal: The goal of this paper is to analyze the influence of different set of test concentrations of ceftriaxone antibiotics on the occurrence of chromosome aberrations after in vitro treatment with concentrations: 0.15mg/ml, 0.25mg/ml and 0.50mg/ml. Materials and Methods: In the study was used the blood of healthy donors in vitro, treated with different concentrations of ceftriaxone. Ceftriaxone is a semisynthetic cephalosporine third generation antibiotic, with broad spectrum of activity and with specific characteristics (Nerlove et al. 1996). As a biomarker of genetic damage are used the methods of cultivation of peripheral blood lymphocytes and analysis of chromosome aberrations. Cytogenetic analysis of ceftriaxone genotoxicity was performed in 48–hour culture of human peripheral blood lymphocytes by test of standard chromosome aberration analysis according to Moorhead, with certain modifications. Insight into the frequency and type of chromosome aberrations is obtained by analyzing 100 metaphases per sample. Results: By the analysis of 100 metaphases per sample was determined that the relative frequency of metaphases with chromosome aberrations is increased with increasing concentrations of ceftriaxone in lymphocyte culture. The increase in the frequency of structural aberrations was also positively correlated with the applied ceftriaxone concentrations. Metaphases with numerical and structural aberrations are registered in lymphocyte cultures treated with ceftriaxone concentration of 0.25 mg/ml and 0.50 mg/ml, but this increase was not significant compared to the control cells cultures. Conclusions: Significantly increased frequency of metaphases with structural chromosome aberrations in cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes treated with concentrations of 0.25 mg/ml and 0.5 mg/ml compared to the control confirming clastogenic potential of this drug. Ceftriaxone also expressed aneugenic activity at the highest test concentration (0.50mg/ml), confirming a statistically significant difference in the frequency of numerical aberrations in cultures treated with doses of 0.5mg/ml.

Key words: ceftriaxone, human lymphocytes, genotoxicity, chromosome aberrations