Genotoxic Effect And Oxidative DNA Damage In HepG2 Cells Exposed To Perfluorooctanoic Acid

Introduction: Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a kind of fully fluorinated organic compounds. It has been extensively used for decades in a wide range of industrial products for its anti-wetting and surfactant properties. PFOA is primarily used as a reactive intermediate, while its salts are used as processing aids in the production of fluoropolymers and fluoroelastomers and in other surfactant uses. PFOA that leaks out into the general environment is bioaccumulative and environmentally persistent due to its metabolic inertness. PFOA has been reported to be found in blood sera of humans.Many studies on PFOA have demonstrated that long-term treatment with PFOA results in the development of liver tumors in rodents, while its carcinogenic risks to humans is less certain. It was documented that PFOA induced hypergeneration of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in HepG2 cells and short-term exposure to PFOA caused significant increase in 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) in liver DNA of rats. Whether genotoxicity and oxidative DNA damage also occur in human cells is not certain. In this study we chose an established human hepatoma cell line–HepG2 as a test system to investigate the genotoxic potential of PFOA. HepG2 cells retain the activities of various phase I and phase II enzymes which play a crucial role in the activation of...