Volume 3, Issue 1

Original research papers

Radiation in Medicine

INFLUENCE OF LOW IODINE-131 DOSES ON SUSCEPTIBILITY TO IONIZING RADIATION AND BIOMARKERS OF HEALTH RISK

Antonina Cebulska-Wasilewska, Mateusz Krzysiek, Grażyna Krajewska, Artur Stępień, Paweł Krajewski

Pages: 13-17

DOI: 10.21175/RadJ.2018.01.003

Received: 17 FEB 2017, Received revised: 17 JUL 2017, Accepted: 19 JUL 2017, Published online: 2 APR 2018

An emergence of 131I in ambient air might be one of the first signs of a mishap. Even though precautions are clearly established, nuclear power plant accidents or any radioactive threat might occur. Iodine in the human body preferentially concentrates in the thyroid, so 131I is frequently used in nuclear medicine to diagnose or cure problems with it. We have previously reported strong variability in health risk biomarkers detected in lymphocytes of patients after diagnostic and therapeutic I-131 applications. Now, we report cellular responses to a challenging high dose of X-rays applied in vitro, as well as the DNA repair capacity examined in lymphocytes isolated from whole blood samples collected from 41 subjects exposed to the diagnostic 131I dose, and 30 persons who were unexposed. The aim of the study was to find out if individual susceptibilities to ionizing radiation (IR), defined by molecular and cellular repair capacities, of persons diagnosed with very low I-131 doses are different from those observed in an unexposed control group, and how confounding factors – age, gender, family vulnerability to cancer, and polymorphism in genes associated with repair – affect it. he DNA repair competence assay was applied using the Comet method. The RDT-DNA (residual DNA damage, percentage of unrepaired DNA during post irradiation incubation) was used as a biomarker of fast DNA repair on a molecular level and was compared to. SCE levels (sister chromatid exchanges) measured on a cellular level as biomarker associated with cellular repair via homologous recombination. On average, lymphocytes of the subgroup diagnosed by 131I expressed a statistically significant increase in repair efficiency of DNA damage induced by a challenging dose as compared to the average value from the respective unexposed control group. That increase was followed by a strong decrease in the percentage of cells with a significantly elevated number of SCE and frequency of cells with significantly elevated numbers of SCE (HFC- high frequency cells). The observed increase of DNA repair efficiency also corresponded to previously reported significant decreases of chromosome aberrations levels, and to MN frequencies known as biomarkers of health risk. Nevertheless, all investigated biomarkers were characterized by high variability between individual responses. Obtained results show a slight dependence on gender and the family’s predisposition to cancer, and a significant dependence on polymorphism in the XRCC1(194), XRCC1(399), and XRCC13(241) genes involved in DNA repair process. While it is necessary to increase the number of polymorphism studies, we propose a model of short-term biomarker battery applicable for triage and prediction of the health risk from any ionizing radiation exposure.

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