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ABSTRACT
Iodine is an essential component for thyroid hormone synthesis and it has been demonstrated that a severe iodine deficiency can lead to several disorders, such as mental and physical retardation and thyroid pathologies.
The fortification of salt in the form of iodate or iodide, represents the main method for supplying the deficient population in several countries in the world.
In litterature there is little data on the genotossicity of iodate, and therefore it is necessary to investigate, bymeans of a citotoxicity test such as the sister chromatid exchange test, the effect of this substance.
Sister chromatid exchanges are an index of the replication block because of DNA damage and chromosomal lesions.
We did this test on lymphocytes of the peripheral blood of healthy donors, treated with different concentrations of potassium iodate. As a positive standard we used potassium bromate, a known mutagen, and mitomycin C, a sister chromatid exchange inductor.
To establish a biological range of tossicity, a series of experiments were done in the first stages of our work.
The results show a dose-dipendent effect for which several mechanisms have been hypothesized.
