Acta Medica Medianae (Jul 2001)
MUTAGENOUS EFFECTS OF HORMONES
Abstract
There is a widely accepted view that the endogenous substances, includinghormones, do not have any mutagenous effect when present in the usualphysiological concentrations. However, beside relative stability and permanence ofthe genetic material, its changeability is also needed to provide for the biologicalevolution. Thus, it is possible to expect that certain reactions, due to the complexity ofthe mechanism of the signal transduction under the effect of hormones, still! lead tothe creation of reactive derivatives able to inter-react with the DNA molecules thusencouraging the emergence of mutations. This paper gives a survey of the explorationof the hormones' genotoxic effects in various test-systems, namely, from the bactericthrough the ćeli cultures and experiments in vivo upon laboratory guinea-pigs, up tothe determination of the mutagenous effects in the people that were treated byhormones. The steroid hormones' effects are described in detail in the literaturewhile, on the other hand, there is not sufficient knowledge yet about possible changesof the genetic material under the influence of the non-steroid hormones. Theexaminations of the steroid hormones' geonotoxicity in the bacterial systems havemainly given negative results. Tn more complex eukaryotic systems in vitro and invivo most of the steroid hormones manifest mutagenous effects, though the resultmay vary depending one the type of ćeli or the biological species used in theexperiment. As for the non-steroid hormones, though they have been studied less, itseems that they do not mostly express mutagenous effects. Today it is clear that thesteroid hormones (especially estrogen) are completely carcinogenic and that they arecapable of encouraging the process of carcinogenesis both by inducing covalentsimulating the cell division (tumor promoters).
