Low-dose radiation is good for health?

A little radiation will be good for the health of the mouse. Low dose radiation makes mice healthier.

A new study in mice showed that X-rays may not heal broken bones, but low doses of ionizing radiation may give rise to other health benefits.

High dose radiation is known to be very harmful to health. Scientists have thought that low doses of radiation will be less harmful but may leave great consequences later. But radiation works differently when in low doses, even creating health benefits for mice with an unusual genetic property.

Randy Jirtle of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues reported online November 1 in the FASEB Journal. Antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin C and E, eliminate those health benefits.

"What happens at high doses is not true for what happens at low doses , " said Edward Calabrese, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Chemicals that are toxic at high doses can develop or enhance health in low concentrations. "It is an important observation that is still highly appreciated ," he said.

Jirtle's team performed research on yellow agouti mice. Scientists use them to assess how diet, chemicals and other environmental conditions affect gene activity in animals, possibly including humans. One thing scientists do not understand is that the cause of agouti gene is 'switched on' in all mouse body tissues.

This leads to a more yellow fur, obesity, diabetes and cancer than usual.

But attach chemical 'tags' to DNA, a process called DNA methylation, around the agouti gene that turns off gene activity, leading to a healthy, obese, brown mouse.

Chemicals, stress or other factors that interfere with methylation change the hair color and health status of mice.

Scientists irradiated pregnant mice so that fetal growth mice received doses from 0.4 centigrays and 7.6 centigrays. (Dental x-rays provide about 0.4 to 0.8 centigrays). Some mice are inserted into the scanner but not irradiated. Maternal mice receiving radiation doses between 0.7 and 3 centigrays gave birth to more pups with yellow hair than unirradiated mice. Brown coat color among mice exposed to low-dose radiation was associated with a higher level of DNA methylation into the agouti gene. This shows that radiation has done something to change chemical tags.

Give your mother the antioxidant that prevents tagging. This finding may mean that radiation is creating oxidants. Too many oxidative molecules in a cell can tear off part of proteins, DNA and other ingredients, but a small amount of oxidants will serve as chemical messengers for cells. .

In this case, low-level radiation may have cellular signals to turn off agouti activity, thus making the mice healthy. Vitamins and antioxidants that block 'messages' will promote unhealthy conditions.

Jirtle is not really excited about the first result. " Nobody wants to think that low-dose radiation is beneficial and what you put in your vitamin pill is not good ," he said.

Jirtle suggests that people can also get some benefits from exposure to low-dose radiation.

Before antibiotics became popular, some doctors treated ears, sinusitis and gangrene with low doses of X-rays. Low doses of radiation are sometimes used to treat arthritis in people who cannot take anti-inflammatory drugs. Radiation may help regulate the immune system by altering epigenetic tags on DNA in immune cells, he said.