Genes and Environment

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Chloroquine (CQ) are two anti-malarial drugs that are now being extensively used by healthcare workers and common people as a prophylactic drug against the Corona Virus Disease -19 (COVID-19) in several parts of the world. There are no clinical studies that have established any clinical efficacy of these drugs as a prophylactic against COVID-19. In this review, the authors elucidated the mechanism of immunomodulation by both HCQ and CQ and highlighted the mutagenic and genotoxic effects from the available literature. This article is written with the sole objective that the reader will be able to recognize the adverse effects of these drugs when consumed by healthy individuals as a prophylactic. Current evidence cumulatively demonstrates that CQ is a mutagenic and genotoxic drug and both HCQ and CQ are not effective against the COVID-19 infection either as post-exposure prophylaxis or as a curative drug. The authors concluded that healthy individuals should refrain from the use of these drugs as prophylactics until further investigation.

Read this article: Volume 41, Article number: 25 (2020)

Article collection: Meeting Reports: collection of various meeting reports published in G&E
Collection published 23 March 2020 
Article collection: Genotoxicity Tests
Collection published 28 June 2019
JEMS Open Symposia 2017&2018: “Challenges of Young Scientists”
Collection published 14 February 2019
10th Anniversary Special Issue
Collection published 1 July 2016
JEMS Open Symposium 2015: “Life Style and Cancer”
Collection published: 22 January 2016
Asian Conference on Environmental Mutagens (ACEM2014)
Collection published: 1 August 2015

APC Discount for JEMS members
Members of Japanese Environmental Mutagen Society(JEMS)  are entitled to receive discount on Article Processing Charge. 

Free APC for researchers in Asia
We now offer a full APC waiver to the submissions from the countries where Asian Association of the Environmental Mutagen Societies (AAEMS)–partnering societies are located (excluding Japan). Those countries are Australia, China, India, Iran, South Korea, Philippines and Thailand.

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In order to receive discount/full waiver, author has to  submit the waiver code during the process of manuscript submission. Authors eligible for these arrangements should contact the journal (editor@j-ems.org) prior to submission and request the code. 

About JEMS
The mission of the Japanese Environmental Mutagen Society is to discover how environmental mutagens affect all organisms, and to promote and apply this knowledge to protect human health and our environment. The Japanese Environmental Mutagen Society was founded in 1972, and since then the society has hosted annual conferences and open symposia on timely topics. The society is a member of the Asian Association of the Environmental Mutagen Societies and the International Association of Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Societies.

Masami Yamada studied bacterial genetics and got a PhD degree from Osaka University. Since 1990, using genetic engineering techniques, she has constructed many strains from standard tester strains for the Ames test at the National Institute of Health Sciences, Tokyo. Such strains are useful for research fields on environmental mutagens.
Strain requests come to her every year from domestic, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and other countries. Currently, she teaches Biology and Genetic Engineering at National Defense Academy of Japan.