Table 1.

Reports on the genotoxicity of the aspartame

Test material	Genotoxic end-point	Results	References
S. typhimurium TA98, TA100, TA153, TA1538	Frame-shift mutation/base pair substitution	−	Molinary (1978a, b)
AMES	Frame-shift mutation/base pair substitution	+	Shephard et al. (1993)
CD rats	Dominat lethal assay	−	Molinary (1984)
Purina cesarean rats	Host mediated assay	−	Molinary (1984)
E. coli uvrB, uvrB umuC and uvrB lexA	Mutagenicity (phenylalanine, a metabolite of aspartame)	−	Sargentini and Smith (1986)
E. coli K012 uvrB	Mutagenicity (phenylalanine, a metabolite of aspartame)	+	Sargentini and Smith (1986)
F344, Sprague–Dawley male rats	Rat hepatocytes/DNA repair assay	−	Jeffrey and Williams (2000)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow	Chromosomal aberration	−	Mukhopadhyay et al. (2000)
Mouse organs	Comet assay	−	Sasaki et al. (2002)
Human lymphocytes	Chromosomal aberrations	+	Rencüzoğulları et al. (2004)
Human lymphocytes	Sister chromatid exchanges	−	Rencüzoğulları et al. (2004)
Human lymphocytes	Micronuclei	+ (2,000 μg/ml)	Rencüzoğulları et al. (2004)
Human lymphocytes/cytotoxicity	Replication index	+ (2,000 μg/ml-48 h)	Rencüzoğulları et al. (2004)
Human lymphocytes/cytotoxicity	Mitotic index	+	Rencüzoğulları et al. (2004)
S. typhimurium TA98, TA100	Frame-shift mutation/base pair substitution	−	Rencüzoğulları et al. (2004)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow	Comet assay	+	Bandyopadhyay et al. (2008)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow and peripheral blood	Micronucleus	+	Kamath et al. (2010)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow	Chromosomal aberration	+	Kamath et al. (2010)
Swiss albino mice	Sperm morphology	+	Kamath et al. (2010)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow	Chromosomal aberrations	+	Alsuhaibani (2010)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow	Sister chromatid exchanges	−	Alsuhaibani (2010)
Swiss albino mice/bone marrow	Mitotic index	−	Alsuhaibani (2010)
Albino rats and their offspring	Chromosomal aberrations and DNA fragmentation	+	Abd Elfatah et al. (2012)
Calf thymus DNA	DNA binding	+	Kashanian et al. (2013)

+ Positive, − negative