Abstract

Purpose

Carcinogenic effects of radiation are often assumed to be universally understood, more often than, for example, carcinogenic effects of many different chemicals. This in turn leads to an assumption that any dose of radiation, delivered at any dose rate, poses a serious health challenge. However, ionizing radiation is part of our environment and all life on Earth’s crust is exposed to it to a varying degree. The sphere of low dose radiation research is focused on understanding the molecular and biophysical mechanisms triggered by the exposures that increase cancer incidence only fractionally in the exposed population. In the low dose and low dose rate radiation research the innate biology of an organism carries more weight in predicting a response to radiation than the radiation dose itself; this makes the concept such as shape of a dose response difficult to extrapolate unlike for moderate and high doses of radiation. Therefore, this research is done the best in controlled animal experiments. This review is focused on the low dose low linear energy transfer (LET) radiation exposures for which the data is the most abundant over the last decade and a half.

Conclusions

Ionizing radiation animal studies suggest that the effects of exposure very much depend on animal genotype and health status. While it is likely that the numbers of different models will continue to increase, it is only the integration of all of the data that may lead to a fuller understanding of low dose radiation effects. To that end, we hope that this area of research will see an increase in international archival efforts and exchange of raw data information opening the possibilities for new types of meta analyses.

中文翻译：

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低剂量和低剂量率低线性能量转移辐射对动物的影响–与致癌作用相关的最新研究综述

摘要

目的

Carcinogenic effects of radiation are often assumed to be universally understood, more often than, for example, carcinogenic effects of many different chemicals. This in turn leads to an assumption that any dose of radiation, delivered at any dose rate, poses a serious health challenge. However, ionizing radiation is part of our environment and all life on Earth’s crust is exposed to it to a varying degree. The sphere of low dose radiation research is focused on understanding the molecular and biophysical mechanisms triggered by the exposures that increase cancer incidence only fractionally in the exposed population. In the low dose and low dose rate radiation research the innate biology of an organism carries more weight in predicting a response to radiation than the radiation dose itself; this makes the concept such as shape of a dose response difficult to extrapolate unlike for moderate and high doses of radiation. Therefore, this research is done the best in controlled animal experiments. This review is focused on the low dose low linear energy transfer (LET) radiation exposures for which the data is the most abundant over the last decade and a half.

结论

电离辐射动物研究表明，暴露的影响在很大程度上取决于动物的基因型和健康状况。虽然不同模型的数量可能会继续增加，但只有对所有数据进行整合，才能对低剂量辐射效应有更全面的了解。为此，我们希望这一研究领域将看到国际档案工作的增加和原始数据信息的交换，为新型荟萃分析提供可能性。