Long-term effects of a single whole-body exposure of mice to ionizing radiations I. Life-shortening

Abstract

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.