Cytotoxic Effect of Nefazodone on HepG2 Cell Line and the Reliability of Comet Assay to Determine Genotoxicity.

Abstract

Nefazodone is atypical antidepressant which was manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1994 to avoid the adverse effects associated with other antidepressants, including nausea, sedation, insomnia, cardiovascular toxi-city, weight gain and dysfunction.

In 2004, nefazodone was withdrawn from USA after its withdrawal from Canada and Europe due to the reports of liver injury in patients treated with this drug. The current study was performed to investigate the cytotoxic and genotoxic effect of nefazodone on HepG2 cell line at different concentrations by using MTT assay and comet assay, respectively. The results showed that nefazodone causes a reduction in cells viability of  HepG2 cell line with an IC50 4.682 µg/ml. Comet assay showed a significant increment in the three parameters (tail length, percent of DNA in tail and tail moment) in a concentration-dependent manner, when compared with negative control (p˂0.01), but these results considered as false positive due to cells death.