Evaluation of DNA damage in babies with Neural Tube Defects

DNA damage in cases with neural tube defects occurs due to many causes like genetic muta-tions, metabolic derangements. The level of DNA damage can be evaluated by single cell gel electrophoresis method (comet assay). The present study included 30 clinically diagnosed Neural tube defect cases, and 30 controls matched for age and sex. The cases were catego-rized into three groups according to the severity of the disease as mild, moderate and severe. The mean total length of comet (71.9 ± 19.2 μm vs 49.0 ± 10.7 μm) (p <0.05); mean tail length (33.6 ± 15.1 μm vs 4.7 ± 2.4 μm) (p < 0.05); mean % of DNA in tail (20.3 ± 7.1 vs 8.5 ± 3.9) (p <0.05)were significantly more in cases than in controls. As the severity increases the DNA damage also increases among the cases. The mean % of DNA in tail were 11.2 ± 7.1; 21.4 ± 6.5; 22.9 ± 5.0; in mild, moderate and severe cases respectively. It is concluded that there is significant DNA damage in Neural tube defect cases and also the damage increases with se-verity of the disease.