IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0025113.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gamma-H2AX-Based Dose Estimation for Whole and Partial Body Radiation Exposure

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Horn
  • Stephen Barnard
  • Kai Rothkamm

Abstract

Most human exposures to ionising radiation are partial body exposures. However, to date only limited tools are available for rapid and accurate estimation of the dose distribution and the extent of the body spared from the exposure. These parameters are of great importance for emergency triage and clinical management of exposed individuals. Here, measurements of γ-H2AX immunofluorescence by microscopy and flow cytometry were compared as rapid biodosimetric tools for whole and partial body exposures. Ex vivo uniformly X-irradiated blood lymphocytes from one donor were used to generate a universal biexponential calibration function for γ-H2AX foci/intensity yields per unit dose for time points up to 96 hours post exposure. Foci – but not intensity – levels remained significantly above background for 96 hours for doses of 0.5 Gy or more. Foci-based dose estimates for ex vivo X-irradiated blood samples from 13 volunteers were in excellent agreement with the actual dose delivered to the targeted samples. Flow cytometric dose estimates for X-irradiated blood samples from 8 volunteers were in excellent agreement with the actual dose delivered at 1 hour post exposure but less so at 24 hours post exposure. In partial body exposures, simulated by mixing ex vivo irradiated and unirradiated lymphocytes, foci/intensity distributions were significantly over-dispersed compared to uniformly irradiated lymphocytes. For both methods and in all cases the estimated fraction of irradiated lymphocytes and dose to that fraction, calculated using the zero contaminated Poisson test and γ-H2AX calibration function, were in good agreement with the actual mixing ratios and doses delivered to the samples. In conclusion, γ-H2AX analysis of irradiated lymphocytes enables rapid and accurate assessment of whole body doses while dispersion analysis of foci or intensity distributions helps determine partial body doses and the irradiated fraction size in cases of partial body exposures.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Horn & Stephen Barnard & Kai Rothkamm, 2011. "Gamma-H2AX-Based Dose Estimation for Whole and Partial Body Radiation Exposure," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(9), pages 1-8, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0025113
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025113
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025113
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025113&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0025113?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Uta Eberlein & Michel Peper & Maria Fernández & Michael Lassmann & Harry Scherthan, 2015. "Calibration of the γ-H2AX DNA Double Strand Break Focus Assay for Internal Radiation Exposure of Blood Lymphocytes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-11, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0025113. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.