The mouse (Mus musculus) bone marrow micronucleus test was carried out using 24 outbred National Institutes of Health (NIH) mice, 24 inbred Swiss Webster (CFW) mice and 20 inbred Bagg albino/color locus Jackson (BALB/cJ) mice. The mice in the experimental group (n = 32) were injected intraperitoneally with 133 mg kg-1 of metronidazole parenteral solution and the control group consisted of mice (n = 36) which had not been injected with metronidazole. There was no significant difference (p > 0.05) between the sexes regarding the micronucleus frequency in either the experimental or the control group. When the Mn frequencies of the three strains were compared, the results for the CFW and BALB/cJ strains did not differ statistically (p > 0.05) for either the experimental or control groups but there were significant (p < 0.05) differences between the CFW and NIH strains and the NIH and BALB/cJ strains for the experimental and control groups, with the NIH strain always showing the highest micronucleus frequency. Our results also show that metronidazole was possible genotoxic agent because it produced a significant increase (p < 0.05) in the micronucleus frequency of the experimental group as compared to the control group for all the three mouse strains tested.
BALB/cJ; bone marrow micronucleus test; CFW; genotoxicity; metronidazole; NIH
