HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Background: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Tobacco smoking is its primary cause, and yet the precise molecular alterations induced by smoking in lung tissue that lead to lung cancer and impact survival have remained obscure. A new framework of research is needed to address the challenges offered by this complex disease.

The employment of the sensitive comet assay, which is able to detect early the effects of a recent exposure to genotoxic substances, allowed us to find a slight DNA damage, only on exfoliated buccal cells of day hospital nurses, the group handling the highest amount of drugs during the administration process. This finding suggests that comet assay on exfoliated buccal cells could represent a useful tool to evaluate early and still repairable genotoxic effects of exposure to antineoplastic drug mixtures and then contribute to the improvement of the hospital safety practices.

mRNFL, mGCL, and mIPL are significantly reduced in MS patients without concomitant pRNFL thinning. These retinal changes show a significant association with cortical regions that are known to be important for visuospatial performance.