Oxidative DNA damage in nasal epithelium is not related to nasal inflammation

Reactive oxygen species released by neutrophils have been suggested to cause oxidative DNA damage as well as carcinogenic effects. It was the purpose of this study to relate oxidative DNA damage in nasal epithelial cells to nasal inflammation. The human nose was used as the target organ, comparing neutrophilic inflammation and the oxidative DNA lesion 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) in epithelial cells obtained by nasal brush. Although our previous work has shown that isolated human neutrophils are able to induce 8-OHdG in a rat lung epithelial cell line, no association between inflammation (neutrophil numbers) and 8-OHdG was observed in the nose. Although this observation can be simply explained by methodological details, it remains speculative whether neutrophils cause oxidative DNA damage in respiratory epithelium in vivo and more studies are needed to elucidate the possible association between neutrophils and genotoxicity in the lung.