Assessment of urinary mutagens presence in a population of non smokers.

The paper presents the early results of a study involving a group of 312 non smoking and not professionally exposed subjects (144 males and 168 females) in order to evaluate the probable presence of urinary mutagens possibly derived from aspecific exposures. Urine samples were assayed by the Ames test on the YG1024 Salmonella typhimurium strain in the presence of S9 mix with plate incorporation method with preincubation. At the moment of sample collection, the subjects were invited to fill a questionnaire on their main characteristics and lifestyle. On the basis of laboratory data analysis, it emerged that, on 288 samples with a valuable mutagenic activity, 20 urinary extracts (8 of which were males and 12 were females) showed mutagenicity levels twice as much as spontaneous revertants. Diet and indoor exposure to passive smoking, fireplace and cooking fume exposure seemed to play a major role among the lifestyle behaviours investigated in generating positive mutagenic response with a statistically significant difference between positive and negative samples induction (Chi square, P = 0.0057 and P = 0.0168 respectively). After correction of induced revertants by means of creatinine excretion determination, it appeared that females, who had the higher mean urinary mutagenic activity, showed a mutagenicity level twice as much as men (364 +/- 491 revertants/mmole creatinine for males against 605 +/- 868 revertants/mmole creatinine in females, Mann-Whitney U-test, z = -3.97, P < 0.0001) possibly in consequence of their greater cooking fumes exposure. The study, that carefully evaluated the characteristics of involved subjects, reveals the presence, even though modest, of mutagens in urine of an apparently not significantly exposed population. In addition, standardization of method leads to suppose little feasible a confounding influence of considered features. Moreover, it would be therefore rather interesting to study the effect of low exposure time persistence.

Cervical cancer screening in the Ferrara Local Health Authority catchment area.

Since 1996, the Emilia-Romagna Region has been promoting screening programmes for cervical cancer, selecting resident women aged 25-64 as a target population. This analysis concerns a second round of screening performed in the city of Ferrara and its province. A total of 103,971 women were invited to be screened, but only 55.51% of them arrived on the day of the scheduled screening. We therefore decided to investigate the reasons for this lack of participation using preliminary findings from the local screening program registry. These indicated that non-attendance was related to variables such as area of residence and age, and significant differences were observed between localities, with a consistently greater participation in industrial neighbourhoods and their surroundings than in rural areas. In order to elucidate these observations further, a cross-sectional survey, placing special emphasis on setting, area of residence, age and level of education, was performed by structured telephone questionnaire, in order to identify the reasons behind non-attendance. Approximately 94% of the contacted women agreed to be interviewed, thereby demonstrating that a telephone interview is a valid means of collecting data in such cases. It should be noted that, among the women unwilling to respond to the questionnaire, a marked increase in percentage was observed for those resident in rural areas, of whom approximately 50% fell into the under-40 age group. The results of the survey indicated, as demonstrated by several previous studies, that age and the area of residence are both determining factors in the decision or not to participate in a screening programme. It was also observed that women who had completed the lower and upper secondary school education were shown to pay greater attention to health matters than those who had not.