Safrole-DNA adducts in human peripheral blood—an association with areca quid chewing and CYP2E1 polymorphisms

It has been recently demonstrated that safrole (4-allyl-1,2-methylenedioxybenzene)-DNA adducts are present in oral cancer tissue from patients who have chewed areca quid (AQ) containing high concentration of safrole. In this study, the presence of safrole-DNA adducts in peripheral white blood cells from 88 subjects with a known AQ chewing history and 161 matched controls were studied with the aim of identifying the adducts as a biomarker for safrole exposure. This study also analyzed the correlation between the level of safrole-DNA adducts and polymorphism of the CYP2E1 gene, alone and in combination with the GST M1 and GST T1-deletion polymorphisms. The results demonstrated the presence of safrole-DNA adducts in 83 (94.32%) of the DNA samples from subjects with current AQ chewing history and 21 (13.04%) of the control samples without known AQ chewing habit (P