The influence of caffeine on the mitomycin C-induced chromosome aberration frequency in normal human and xeroderma pigmentosum cells.

The clastogenic effect of mitomycin C (MC) was determined in two normal fibroblast cell lines and two xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) cell lines, a variant and a group A excision-deficient line. The group A xeroderma cell line was substantially more sensitive to MC than either the XP variant or the normal human cells. On caffeine post-treatment potentiation of the MC-induced aberration frequency occurred in all the cell lines. The XP variant cell line exhibited a distinctly higher sensitivity to caffeine than the classical XP or the normal human cell line.