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Does caffeine induce dominant lethal mutations in mice?

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Summary

The problem of mutagenic activity of caffeine (1-3-7-trimethylxanthine) in man became more and more urgent because it is; first, one of the most frequently used stimulants in beverages and drugs and; second, recently several contradictory reports have been published [37, 29, 1, 43] which were followed up in public with great interest. We, therefore, tested the spermatogenesis of mice with the method of induction of dominant lethal mutations [42] in order to find a mutagenic effect, and by fractionating the spermatogenesis in eight breeding groups to detect some sensitive stages after a single treatment with a high caffeine dose. The animals used were of the C3H inbred strain of mice, the dose just tolerated by these animals was 0.25 g caffeine/kg body weight. Two experiments were carried out under same conditions with 29 males treated and 10 males in the control group. 373 pregnant females fertilized by the treated males showed among their 3495 implants 15% dead implantations while 201 females fertilized by the control males had 2139 implants, 13.6% of which died during pregnancy. This slight difference does not indicate any mutagenic function of caffeine on the spermatogenesis of mice as a whole. The tested stages of spermatogenesis revealed no sensitivity. A slight increase in pseudopregnancy (P≈0.007) could be observed, which might be physiologically caused. Copulation frequency was considerably decreased, especially in the first week after treatment.

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  1. Institut für Anthropologie und Humangenetik der Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germeny

    Ilse-Dore Adler

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With the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

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Adler, ID. Does caffeine induce dominant lethal mutations in mice?. Hum Genet 7, 137–148 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287078

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287078

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