TESTS FOR GENOTOXICITY : PRINCIPLES AND FINDINGS IN RELATION TO OMEPRAZOLE

Omeprazole has been subjected to an unusually extensive range of genotoxicity tests ranging from mutational assays in bacteria (e.g. Ames test), mutation and chromosome damage tests on mammalian cells in vitro, chromosome damage tests in mouse bone marrow and erythroid precursor cells exposed in vivo, and DNA damage assays in the nuclei of liver cells of rats exposed to omeprazole in vivo. The conclusions from these studies were uniformly negative. Details of the tests are summarized in this review.