Mutagenesis, Vol. 16, No. 2, 103-107,
March 2001
© 2001 UK Environmental Mutagen Society/Oxford University Press
A test of the mutagenicity of cooked meats in vivo
1 Department of Biology, York University, Toronto, Canada, M3J 1J3, 2 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA 94551, USA and 3 Apotex Pharmaceuticals, Weston, Ontario, Canada M9L 1T9
There is a correlation between intestinal cancer and diets high in meat, so fried beef, chicken, lamb, pork and fish were tested for their ability to induce mutations in the small intestine of mice. The mice were bred to be heterozygous at the Dlb-1 locus so that loss of the dominant Dlb-1 b allele by mutation could be detected. Mice were fed the AIN-76A diet (which contains 50% of the calories in the form of sucrose) or an isocaloric diet in which the sucrose was replaced by meat or fish, for 5 or 9 weeks. Manifestation of mutants requires ~1 week in this system, so this corresponds to an effective exposure of 4 and 8 weeks, respectively. There was no significant difference in the weights of animals on the different diets, and no difference in mutant frequency. Several food mutagens were present, but at low levels. These results, when considered in the light of tests of 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b] pyridine and amino(
)carboline at much higher doses (Zhang,X.-B., Tao,K.S., Urlando,C., Shaver-Walker,P. and Heddle,J.A. (1996) Mutagenesis, 11, 43–48), indicate that there is no highly mutagenic compound missed by previous testing with bacterial assays and that mixtures of heterocyclic amines at low levels do not show great synergy.
4 Present address: Department of Genetic Toxicology, ViroMed Laboratories Inc., Minneapolis, MN 5-5343-9108, USA
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 416 736 2100, ext. 33053; Fax: +1 416 736 5698; Email: jheddle{at}yorku.ca