Transgenerational Effects of Radiation Exposure
In 1990, the Gardner report suggested a link between paternal exposure to ionising radiation received occupationally by workers at Sellafield and childhood leukaemia in the village of Seascale. Although a later nuclear industry wide study did not support these conclusions (Roman, 1999), the suggestion of an inherited effect of low dose exposure that could lead to adverse health effects in the children of those exposed was subject to further research. Studies of populations exposed by the Chernobyl accident showed a doubling of the mutation rate at certain hypervariable minisatellite loci and it was suggested that these minisatellites could be a biomarker of a paternal effect being inherited by the children of exposed fathers. However, similar studies of the children of atomic bomb survivors, Chernobyl cleanup workers and survivors of childhood and adolescent cancer treated with radiotherapy did not show an increase in the minisatellite mutation rate. The reasons for this difference could be a dose-rate effect as environmental exposures are received in small, incremental doses over many years, whereas the other populations studies have had acute exposures.
At Westlakes we are currently involved in two transgenerational studies, where we are looking at minisatellite mutations in eight hypervariable loci in:
- Sellafield radiation workers and their families
- childhood and young adulthood cancer survivors and their families
The principle aims of these studies are to answer the following questions:
- does paternal pre-conceptional exposure to occupational radiation doses cause an increase in germline mutation rate?
- does any change in the minisatellite mutation rate following occupational radiation exposure follow a dose response relationship?
- does paternal pre-conceptional exposure to radiotherapy doses cause an increase in germline mutation rate?
Principal Investigator:
Dr Gwen Rees
Co-workers: Cheryl Leith
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