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Prochloraz is a broad-spectrum contact imidazol fungicide used against several diseases in wheat, barley and oleaginous plants but also for treatment of flower production. Although prochloraz has endocrine disrupting and hepatocarcinogenic effects, there is lack of data on toxic effects of prochloraz. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the DNA damage effects of prochloraz in NRK-52E cells by using Ames and Comet assay. By using a standard alkaline Comet assay procedure, there was no DNA damage observed after 24 h prochloraz exposure. It also showed that prochloraz caused neither base-pair substitution nor frame shift mutations by using TA98, TA100 strains, respectively, with/without metabolic activation in Ames assay. Both Comet and Ames assays, the exposure concentrations were 12.5, 25, 50 and 100 µM. IC50 value of prochloraz was determined as 110.76 µM in NRK-52E cells by MTT cytotoxicity test. Also, we evaluated possible effects of prochloraz on lipid peroxidation, reduced glutathione (GSH), oxidized glutathione (GSSG) and antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and glutathione reductase (GSH-Rd) in NRK-52E cells at 1-50 µM concentrations. Prochloraz induced lipid peroxidation and altered glutathione contents and antioxidant enzyme activities in NRK-52E cells. Our results indicated that prochloraz showed no evidence of mutagenicity and DNA damage; however, some alterations were observed on lipid peroxidation and antioxidant systems in prochloraz treatment.

Flavin-containing monooxygenases (FMOs) represent the second most important human monooxygenase system, after cytochrome P450s (CYPs) and catalyze the oxygenation of many chemicals containing nitrogen-, sulphur-, phosphorous-, selenium- and other nucleophilic heteroatoms. FMO3 is the prominent FMO form in adult human liver. For FMO3, both interindividual variability within a single ethnic group and variability between ethnic groups have been reported. In our study, three prevalent functional FMO3 variants (E158K, V257M, and E308G) were genotyped in healthy Turkish people by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) methods. The frequencies of alleles and haplotypes were compared with those obtained from different populations. It was found that FMO3 158K, 257M and 308G alleles, demonstrate impaired metabolism toward many FMO3 substrates, were observed frequently in Turkish population similar to the other populations. Also, the frequencies of haplotypes were determined based on individual allelic frequencies and it was observed that the most common haplotypes were haplotip EVE and KVE (E158K/V257M/E308G), which together accounted for 80% of all haplotypes. The obtained data from the present study could be useful for further studies assessing sensitivity to therapeutic drugs, environmental toxicants and common disease.

Ethylenethiourea (ETU), a possible human carcinogen and an antithyroid compound, is the main degradation product of the fungicide, maneb, which is widely used in agriculture. In this study, a rapid and accurate method for the determination of maneb and ETU in various fruit juices (tomato, grape and apple) was developed requiring minimal clean-up of sample extract, no derivatization prior to injection and no specialized LC detectors. Samples were cleaned up using silica and octadecylsilica (C18) cartridges before injection into liquid chromatography (LC) with diode-array detection (DAD). Recoveries ranged between 90 and 101% with relative standard deviations from 0.7 to 3.8%. The limits of determination of maneb and ETU were 0.1 and 0.01 mg l(-1), respectively. The proposed method was used to monitor the presence of maneb and ETU in commercial samples taken from different markets of Istanbul, Turkey. Maneb was found in one tomato juice sample at a concentration of 0.45 mg l(-1) but ETU was below the LOQ. Two tomato juices had no detectable maneb residue but contained ETU at levels of 0.08 and 0.11 mg l-(1).