Interindividual comparison of epoxide hydratase and glutathione S-transferase activities in cultured human fibroblasts

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Abstract
Epoxide hydratase activity with benzo[a]pyrene 4,5-oxide and glutathione S-transferase activity with 2,4-dinitrochlorobenzene as substrates were determined in cultured fibroblasts from skin biopsies of different donors and from several biopsies of the same donor. Variation of the results from experiment to experiment was reduced by the use of a reference cell strain and expression of the results as activities relative to those of the reference cells. Epoxide hydratase activity varied 2.3-fold in 39 cultures from different donors and 2.0-fold in 10 cultures from the same subject (the variation coefficients were 0.22 and 0.15, respectively). The results indicate that, at least in skin fibroblasts, genetically caused interindividual differences in epoxide hydratase activities do not exist or are negligibly small or very rare. Glutathione S-transferase activity varied more in cultures from different donors (variation coefficient = 0.22) than in different cultures from the same donor (variation coefficient = 0.08), but the highest and the lowest activities only differed by a factor of 2.3. No significant differences in either enzyme activity were observed between males, females, subjects without tumours, lung carcinoma bearers and melanoma patients.