Association between Micronuclei Frequency and Body Mass Index Among Koya University Students.

Nowadays, the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity globally has become a public health issue. Since 1975, obesity rates have tripled by 2016 and are related to many risk factors, including nutritional and metabolic syndromes such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The elevated micronuclei in epithelial cells can be potentially linked with increasing BMI and indicate genomic deoxyribonucleic acid damage. Micronuclei can be derived either from whole chromosomes or partially and cannot be equally separated during mitotic cell divisions. It can be a useful biomarker for genomic imbalance in epithelial cells. For this purpose, the micronuclei assay is a simple, low-cost, and rapid method that eliminates the need for deoxyribonucleic acid extraction and cell culture. This research aims to investigate the association between BMI categories and micronuclei frequency among university students. One hundred twenty healthy students were selected, and their body mass index was calculated based on four groups, each with 30 participants, aged between 18 and 25 years. Sterilized toothpicks collected buccal cells from both cheeks. According to this research, an elevated number of micronuclei was found to be highly associated with the change of body mass index categories among 120 selected university students. This research concluded that there is a strong relationship between increasing numbers of micronuclei and increasing body mass index categories, which may be related to the genetic damage of deoxyribonucleic acid in body mass index increases. Micronuclei can be used as a strong genetic biomarker in obese groups.