Summary
A significant increase in the incidence of structural chromosome anomalies has been observed in the sperm of patients treated with radio and/or chemotherapy for different types of cancer when analyzed by the interspecific fertilization of hamster eggs. The analysis of these aberrations shows that while in controls only 9.4% of structural abnormalities are of the stable type, in treated patients this figure increases to 39.3%, thus indicating that the anomalies have not been produced during the fertilization of the hamster egg. However, it is possible that part, or even most, of the breaks appear as a result of a reduced repair capacity of sperm chromosomes in the cytoplasm of the hamster egg.
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Genescá, A., Benet, J., Caballín, M.R. et al. Significance of structural chromosome aberrations in human sperm: analysis of induced aberrations. Hum Genet 85, 495–499 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00194223
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00194223