Distributions of spontaneous chromosomal aberrations and of spontaneous and induced SCE and micronuclei in peripheral lymphocytes from a human population

摘要

Biomonitoring of human populations for exposure to genotoxic /clastogenic agents in the environment or the workplace must depend upon statistical tests for elevations in the frequencies of the biological endpoints being monitored, usually chromosomal aberrations (CA), micronuclei (MN), or sister chromatid exchanges (SCE) in peripheral blood lymphocytes. Statistical tests are based, in turn, upon certain assumptions regarding the distribution of the test statistic. When they are often not recognized as such, tests of significance can be in error, and any conclusion drawn that there is or is not a statistically significant difference between one population sample and another maybe erroneous. In population monitoring this means either false negatives or false positives can result and it is hard to know which is worse. Furthermore, even the intelligent design of studies whose object is to test for an elevated level in an exposed population must depend upon prior knowledge of the nature of both spontaneous and induced response; if variance is large enough, a given-sized study might be inconclusive, and an adequate study simply too large-to be practical.