Immunological Markers of Chronic Occupational Radiation Exposure

This study aimed to identify immunological biomarkers for prolonged occupational radiation exposure and thus studied a random sample of the Mayak Production Association worker cohort (91 individuals). The control group included 43 local individuals never employed at the Mayak Production Association. To identify biomarkers, two groups of workers were formed: the first one included workers chronically exposed to external gamma rays at cumulative doses of 0.5–3.0 Gy (14 individuals); the second one included workers exposed to combined radiation—external gamma rays at doses ranging from 0.7 to 5.1 Gy and internal alpha radiation from incorporated plutonium with 0.3–16.4 kBq body burden (77 individuals). The age range of the study individuals was 66–91 y. Peripheral blood serum protein concentrations of cytokines, immunoglobulins, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 were analyzed using enzyme-linked immunoassay following the manufacturer’s protocol. Flow cytometry was used to analyze levels of various lymphocyte subpopulations. The findings of the current study demonstrate that some immunological characteristics may be considered as biomarkers of prolonged chronic radiation exposure for any radiation type (in the delayed period after the exposure) based on fold differences from controls: M immunoglobulin fold differences were 1.75 ± 0.27 (p = 0.0001) for external gamma-ray exposure and 1.50 ± 0.27 (p = 0.0003) for combined radiation exposure; matrix metalloproteinase‐9 fo...
Source: Health Physics - Category: Radiology Tags: Papers Source Type: research