Investigation of the genotoxic effects of patent blue V (E131) in human peripheral lymphocytes and in silico molecular docking

Patent Blue V (PBV) is a water-soluble synthetic dyestuff that is used as a coloring agent in the food industry and for medical imaging in health monitoring. The aim of this study was to investigate the in vitro clastogenic, aneugenic and cytotoxic effects of PBV in human peripheral lymphocytes using micronucleus assay, comet assay, as well as plasmid DNA interaction and bacterial AMES tests. In addition to in vitro tests, the affinity of PBV against DNA was determined by molecular docking analysis in silico. PBV produced significant MN formation only at high doses and longer treatment time, however, it did not significantly affect the nuclear division index (NDI). Furthermore, PBV was unable to cause DNA single-strand breaks and significant oxidative damage on the pBR322 plasmid DNA and it didn't reverse the harmful effects caused by the clastogenic treatment of UV + H2O2 on plasmid DNA. In the Ames test, no significant increase was detected in the number of revertant colonies of mutant strains, TA98 and TA100, following PBV treatment. No significant molecular interaction between B-DNA and PBV occured in molecular docking simulations. In conclusion, PBV had no significant genotoxic and cytotoxic effects in this study. However, considering that the information intensity related to the genotoxic effects of PBV in the literature is still insufficient, reports of further studies with different genotoxicity endpoints will be needed to elucidate the exact genotoxic feature.