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. 1978 Jan;13(1):19–24. doi: 10.1128/aac.13.1.19

Absence of Strand Breaks in Deoxyribonucleic Acid Treated with Metronidazole

Nicholas F LaRusso †, Maria Tomasz 2, David Kaplan 2, Miklós Müller 1
PMCID: PMC352178  PMID: 626487

Abstract

The deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)-degrading potential of metronidazole was evaluated in vitro by three techniques: determination of melting curve, measurement of viscosity, and centrifugation in neutral or alkaline sucrose gradients. Studies were performed on calf thymus DNA and on 3H-labeled or unlabeled pneumococcal and T7 phage DNA after treatment with metronidazole alone or metronidazole reduced by sodium dithionite in the presence of DNA. This latter process is known to elicit covalent binding of metronidazole to DNA. Reduced or unreduced metronidazole had no effect on the melting properties, viscosity, or sedimentation velocity of the nucleic acids studied. Sodium dithionite alone, however, caused a 25% decrease in the intrinsic viscosity of pneumococcal DNA, and decreased the sedimentation velocity of pneumococcal and T7 phage DNA in both neutral and alkaline sucrose gradients. These data suggest that degradation of DNA is not important in the interaction of metronidazole with nucleic acids, an interaction assumed relevant to the cytotoxic, radiosensitizing, and mutagenic activities of this compound.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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