The Role of Genetic Polymorphisms in the Occupational Exposure

Abstract

In the last years, genetic polymorphisms have raised interest for their role on the environmental and occupational exposures. They not only are studied at population level to identify genetic diversity among ethnicities but have been recognized also as biomarkers of genetic susceptibility in many fields including medicine, health prevention, epidemiology and pharmacology. In the occupational context, the investigation of gene polymorphisms is part of the biomonitoring of workers exposed to occupational toxicants and carcinogens. However the majority of workers coming from foreign countries may be not familiar with the standard procedures used in the biomonitoring campaigns, which include human biosample harvesting for genetic, metabolic and genotoxic studies. Here we describe the importance of gene polymorphism association with dose and genotoxicity biomarkers and propose a statistical model predicting ethnic-specific susceptibilities based on the genotypes available in public databases when the access to blood genotyping test is not always feasible