Long-term effects of a single whole-body exposure of mice to ionizing radiations - II. Causes of death

The causes of death in mice exposed at the age of 30 days to a single whole-body dose of 15 MeV X-rays have been analyzed from the point of view of both percentage incidence and distribution in time. Ten groups of death causes were used, based on post-mortem findings. In the lower dose groups (50 to 457 r), the percentage incidence was found, in most cases, to vary very little with dose, but some diseases, e. g. leukaemia, did show a definite increase, and others, e. g. pulmonary tumours, a definite decrease with increasing dose. The changes in incidence were linearly related to the dose. The analysis of survival curves for each cause of death separately has revealed that while all causes were advanced by radiation, some were advanced more than others. A definite correlation was found between the acceleration of a given cause of death and the rate of change of the percentage incidence with dose. This suggests that the change of incidence is merely the result of the changed times of onset of disease; an actuarial correction has confirmed this suggestion. It is concluded that the probability of any one disease occurring remains the same in irradiated as in the control animals, the main effect of the radiation being an advancement, at different rates, of all causes of death. The age of the animal at irradiation may be an important factor in deter­mining the relative acceleration of the different diseases. In the high dose groups (549 to 780 r) a definite decrease in incidence of neoplastic diseases has been established. This may be due to a 4 'radiotherapeutic’ effect in cells which later in life might have become manifest as neoplasms.

A systematic study has been made of the reduction of life span in mice exposed to a single whole-body dose of 15 MeV X-rays. 4604 mice of an inbred A substrain were used, all of the same age, 30 days, when irradiated. Nine dose groups, from 50 to 780 r, were used, with a large number of control mice, which were kept to the end of their lives under the same conditions as the irradiated animals. An analysis of the survival curves has revealed two effects of radiation: a reduction in the median age and an increase in standard deviation of the distribution of ages at death. The latter was found to be a quadratic function of dose and it is suggested that the increase is the result of the larger spread in the ages of onset of diseases in irradiated animals. The reduction of life span was found to be proportional to dose, with no threshold. It amounts to 5∙66 ± 0∙18 weeks per 100 r, or to 38 % of the median life span for a dose equal to the LD 50 (698 r). The difference between the life-shortening in males and females was not statistically significant. The data have also been analyzed in terms of Gompertz plots and it was found that they cannot be represented by straight lines, although the displacement of the curves caused by radiation is roughly proportional to dose. The fact that after correcting for the change in standard deviation, all survival curves are parallel to each other, suggests that the effect of exposure is to ‘age' the animal, by the removal of a few weeks of its early life.


1978 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 415 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Maisin ◽  
A. Declève ◽  
G. B. Gerber ◽  
G. Mattelin ◽  
M. Lambiet-Collier ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
J Welsh ◽  
J J Bevelacqua ◽  
L Dobrzyński ◽  
S A R Mortazavi ◽  
Sh Farjadian ◽  
...  

Abscopal effect, a radiobiology term meaning “away from target”, was practically unheard of just ten years ago. This effect describes the elimination and cure of a non-treated tumor when another part of the body is irradiated. Successful treatment of cancer in patients with multiple metastatic foci has sporadically been reported. Abscopal effect after radiotherapy has been introduced as the key factor which induced an anticancer response in these metastatic lesions. Moreover, not receiving chemotherapy is reported to have a role in cancer regression after radiotherapy. Given this consideration, it can be hypothesized that standard radiotherapy doses, which usually classified as high-dose, may cause cancer cells to expose or release their sequestered antigens that had been previously masked. Furthermore, radiotherapy can decrease the suppressive effect of regulatory T cells which usually down modulate immune responses against cancers. Moreover, some data show that low dose total-body irradiation (TBI) alone (without standard localized high dose radiotherapy) may cause suppression of distant metastasis of tumor cells. Induction of a “whole body abscopal effect” can be involved in suppression of distant metastasis. Here we discuss whether cancer treatments could be more successful if immune system is boosted, not destroyed by the treatments such as chemotherapy.


Author(s):  
Jim Cassidy ◽  
Donald Bissett ◽  
Roy A. J. Spence OBE ◽  
Miranda Payne ◽  
Gareth Morris-Stiff

Principles of radiation oncology outlines the physical and biological effects of ionising radiation, and its use in clinical oncology. Radiobiology, examining the response of tissue to ionising radiation, is described with regards to normal and malignant tissues. The effect of fractionation, the delivery of radiotherapy in a series of repeated exposures, is examined. The damaging effects on normal tissues are considered, particularly nonreversible late effects including carcinogenesis. Therapeutic exposure to ionising radiation is contrasted between radical and palliative radiotherapy. The physical properties of ionising radiation beams are described for superficial x-rays, megavoltage x-rays, and electrons. The process of treatment planning is summarised through beam dosimetry, target and critical organ outlining, dose planning, treatment verification, prescription and delivery. Computerised tomography is used for outlining and for verification, using cone beam CT. 0ther methods for image guided radiotherapy include fiducial markers. Increasingly intensity modulated radiotherapy is proving beneficial in reducing normal tissue damage during radical treatment. Stereotactic radiotherapy is used in the radical treatment of small unresectable malignancies. The clinical use of electron therapy, brachytherapy and intraoperative radiotherapy is described. Nuclear medicine uses unsealed radionuclides in imaging primary malignancies and their metastases, and in targeted radiotherapy. Examples include PET scanning, bone scanning, and radio iodine therapy. Whole body irradiation is used to improve outcomes after high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell or bone marrow transplantation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne K. Nitter ◽  
Karin Ø. Forseth

AabstractIntroductionChronic musculoskeletal pain represents a significant health problem among adults in Norway. The prevalence of chronic pain is reported to be 35-53% in cross sectional studies of both genders. For many years, it has been a common opinion among medical doctors that chronic pain may indeed reduce a person’s quality of life, but not affect life expectancy. However, over the previous two decades, reports about mortality and cause of death in individuals with chronic pain have been published. So far, several studies conclude that there is an increased mortality in patients with chronic pain, but it is not clear what causes this. Increased occurrences of cardio-vascular death or cancer death have been reported in some studies, but not verified in other studies.Aims of the studyThe aims of this study were to estimate the mortality rate in females with different extent of pain, to identify potential risk factors for death and to investigate if the causes of death differ according to prior reported pain.MethodsThis is a prospective population-based study of all women between 20 and 50 years registered in Arendal, Norway, in 1989 (N = 2498 individuals). At follow-up in 2007, 2261 living females were retraced, 89 had died.All subjects received a questionnaire containing questions about chronic pain (pain ≥ 3 months duration in muscles, joints, back or the whole body) as well as 13 sub-questions about pain-modulating factors, non-specific health complaints and sleep problems, by mail in 1990, 1995 and 2007. Only subjects who answered the questionnaire in 1990 were included in the analyses. Of the deceased, 71 had answered the questionnaire in 1990.A multivariate model for cox regression analysis was used in order to clarify if chronic pain, sleep problems, feeling anxious, frightened or nervous and number of unspecific health were risk factors for death.The causes of death of 87 of the deceased individuals were obtained by linking the ID-number with the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry.ResultsThe ratio of deceased responders was 2% (14/870) among those with no pain versus 5% (57/1168) among those with chronic pain at baseline. When separating into chronic regional pain and chronic widespread pain, the mortality rate was respectively 4% and 8% in the different groups. Age adjusted hazard ratio for mortality rate in individuals with initially chronic pain was [HR 2.5 (CI 1.4–4.5)] compared to pain free individuals. In the multivariate analysis, having chronic pain [HR 2.1 (1.1–4.2)] and feeling anxious, frightened or nervous [HR 3.2 (1.8–5.6)] were associated with increased risk of death. There was no difference in death from cardiovascular disease or malignancies between the groups of pain free individuals vs. the group of individuals with chronic pain.ConclusionThe mortality rate was significantly higher for individuals with chronic pain compared to pain free individuals, adjusted for age. In addition, feeling anxious, frightened or nervous were risk factors for death. There was an increase in all-cause mortality.


2011 ◽  
Vol 68 (12) ◽  
pp. 1075-1078
Author(s):  
Dragana Cukic

Introduction. Bleeding to death is one of the leading causes of death speaking about violent death in general. Bleeding to death mostly happens through hurt organs or blood vessels of thorax, abdomen and neck or because of destruction of extremities or the whole body. Bleeding to death is very often the consequence of blood pouring, rarely of simultaneous pouring and suffusing of blood, and it is extremely rarely the result of blood suffusing solely and especially due to subcutaneous, retoperitoneal and intramediastinal blood suffusing. Fatal bleeding into soft tissues solely is very rare. During a 10- year- period among 3 000 performed autopsies in the Department of Forensic Medicine in Podgorica, the presented case was the unique one. Case report. The paper presents a 5-year-old boy who was beaten to death by his mother and step-father and died because of massive bleeding into soft tissues. Conclusion. In order to establish a cause of death in cases of exsanguination in soft tissues, a series of postmortem diagnostic procedures should be performed, like those presented in this paper.


2019 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 02072 ◽  
Author(s):  
Žiga Lampret ◽  
Gorazd Krese ◽  
Matjaž Prek

In ventilated and air-conditioned indoor environment, air movement substantially impacts thermal sensation and comfort of occupants from the point of view of whole body and local thermal sensation. Skin temperature and its rate of change are important factors for thermal sensation. Both are affected by the airflow velocity and temperature changes around the body which causes skin temperature fluctuations and changes in convective heat transfer. In this study the impact of temperature fluctuations in airflow on human thermal sensation was examined. For the purposes of the study, an air handling unit was designed for generating airflows with temperature fluctuations and used in a subjective experiment. The experimental study indicates that temperature fluctuations possibly influence the human perception of air movement with a distinct cooling effect.


2002 ◽  
Vol 80 (8) ◽  
pp. 828-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukihisa Miyachi ◽  
Takahisa Koike ◽  
Kenzo Muroi ◽  
Tomoko Kanao ◽  
Taro Kawamoto ◽  
...  

Acute emesis response to harmful doses of X-rays on frogs (Rana porosa porosa) was examined. Results showed that the number of radioemesis events following exposure to 0.85 Gy was slightly higher than in the sham control animals. The increase in emesis action became more pronounced when the total dose of radiation was raised to 2.5 Gy. Only 1 frog out of a total of 12 did not show vomiting following radiation, while no response was observed in sham control animals. Note that animals in which the low dose rate of radiation was applied to whole body did not display any changes in the emesis response relative to control animals. The present studies, and those by others, showed that a brief dose of X-rays prior to a second exposure to a sub-lethal dose might induce a tolerance to radiation. An additional experiment was conducted to examine whether a small conditioning dose could induce a depression of radioemesis (tolerance) following an exposure to high dose X-ray. With prior exposure to 0.3 Gy, only 1 frog out of a total of 5 frogs vomited as a result of radiation exposure. Suppression of the emetic response became significant when the pre-radiation dose was decreased to 0.1 Gy. On the contrary, increasing the small conditioning dose to 0.5 Gy resulted in a remarkable rise of radiation-induced emesis. This results indicate that exposure to the smaller dose of X-rays elicits a tolerance effect to toxic dose level of radiation.Key words: emesis, hormesis, low-dose X-rays, resistance, frog.


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