Chromosomal Instability in peripheral blood lymphocytes in patients with malignancy.

There are lot of studies on the cytogenetic changes in solid tumours but there are very few studies on the cytogenetic changes in peripheral blood by mphosytes in patients with malignancy. In the present study we evaluated peripheral blood lymphocyte cytogenetic changes on short term culture. Twenty four out of 250 patients with various malignancies showed some aberration of karyotypes in peripheral lymphocytes (9-6%) suggesting an underlying genetic instability in these cancer patients or alternatively demonstrating that these changes could be related to exposure to environmental mutagens.