Summary
DNA repair capacity of 18 fibroblast strains from patients with dysplastic nevus syndrome, 5 of them with malignant melanoma, was investigated and their colony-forming ability (D 0) after UV exposure was determined as a measurement of this. Seventeen fibroblast strains from normal donors served as controls. The dose/ response experiments included up to 11 dose levels and two UV wavelength ranges: UV-C (using a low-pressure mercury lamp emitting predominantly 254-nm light) and UV-B (artificial “sunlamp” radiation centering around 312-nm light). The exponential segments of the dose/response curves were analysed by linear regression and the negative reciprocals of the regression coefficients,D 0, were calculated for each cell strain and each wavelength range. When comparingD 0 values of individual cell strains from patients with and without melanomas with the mean value for all normal donors, only 4 out of 18 showed increased sensitivity towards UV-B. This difference, however, was not statistically significant. On the contrary, weighted-meanD 0 values for fibroblast strains from patients with and without melanoma were found to be slightly but significantly higher than those for normal donors (significance level: 5%), indicating that cell strains from these patients were less sensitive to UV light (UV-C and UV-B) of both wavelength. This result, which on the basis of current literature data is somewhat unexpected, holds true within the limits of experimental accuracy of ±12%.
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Abbreviations
- UV:
-
ultraviolet light
- UV-A, UV-B, UV-C:
-
UV light with wavelengths in the ranges 320–400 nm, 290–320 nm, and 230–290 nm
- D 0 (in J/m2):
-
to give 37% colony-forming ability
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Thielmann, H.W., Edler, L., Brucker, A. et al. Fibroblasts derived from patients with dysplastic nevus syndrome are not more sensitive towards 254-nm and 312-nm ultraviolet light than fibroblasts from normal donors. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 117, 65–69 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01613199
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01613199