Cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of permethrin and its microencapsulated formulation

Permethrin is a pyrethroid pesticide used widely in public health for pest control to prevent people from diseases spread by mosquitoes. However, exposure to permethrin may cause adverse health effects, including possible DNA damage. Study aims to assess the cytotoxic and genotoxic potential of permethrin as an active ingredient and compare it with its microencapsulated formulation. HepG2 human cell line was utilized to evaluate the cytotoxicity and genotoxicity after 1 h exposure to different doses of the permethrin active ingredient and its microencapsulated formulation in vitro. We evaluated cytotoxicity using propidium iodide staining; DNA damage was detected by alkaline comet assay. Our results show that the active ingredient was cytotoxic at 2,300 µM, while the microencapsulated formulation exerted no cytotoxicity in the examined concentration range. The microencapsulated formulation induced significant DNA damage compared to the control at 100 µM for tail DNA% (p = 0.01), and at 1000 µM for tail length (p = 0.03) and tail moment (p = 0.01). Although DNA damage was also induced by the active ingredient, it did not reach statistical significance. The findings suggest that the microencapsulated formulation demonstrates genotoxic properties; however, due to the multi-component nature of the commercial product, these effects cannot be attributed to permethrin alone.