Author(s): A. Manoj, K. Ramachandra Rao, B. Vishnu Bhat, C. Venkatesh, Z. Bobby
The current study was conducted to correlate the level of DNA damage with multiorgan dysfunction (MOD) in perinatal asphyxia. Among the 80 cases with MOD, 25% each of the babies had five and four organ system involvement , while 23.8% of babies had involvement of 3 systems and 26.3% had 2 organ system dysfunction. The DNA damage increased with the number of systems involved. The comet tail length increased from 24.76±3.203, 42.192±4.685, 57.40±4.246 and 90.734±2.485mm with two, three, four and five organ system dysfunction respectively. The percentage of DNA in tail of comet was also significantly higher with increase in number of system involved (p <0.001). There was significant positive correlation between %DNA in tail of comet and serum MDA level. It is concluded that oxidative stress and DNA damage have a linear correlation to MOD in perinatal asphyxia.