A study of the mutagenicity of anesthetics and their metabolites.

The commonly used volatile anesthetics, several of their metabolites, and drugs frequently employed by the anesthesiologist were screened for mutagenicity in the Salmonella/rat-liver microsomal assay system developed by Dr. B. Ames and his colleagues. Chloral hydrate, both a sedative and metabolite of trichloroethylene, was found to be weakly mutagenic. Other compounds testing including halothane, isoflurane, methoxyflurane, diazepam and chlordiazepoxide were not mutagenic. Non-volatile compounds were tested for their ability to inhibit growth of bacterial strains with decreased capacity to repair damaged DNA. None of the compounds tested inhibited the growth of DNA-repair-deficient strains relative to a strain with normal DNA-repair. Halothane and trilene were tested for direct interaction with DNA; under the experimental conditions employed, no direct interaction of these compounds and DNA could be detected.