DNA damage and prediction of radiation response in lymphocytes and epidermal skin human cells

✍ Scribed by M. Isabel Núñez; M. Rosario Guerrero; Escarlata López; M. Rosario Del Moral; M. Teresa Valenzuela; Eva Siles; Mercedes Villalobos; Vicente Pedraza; John H. Peacock; J. Mariano Ruiz De Almodóvar

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 212 KB
• Volume: 76
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0215(19980504)76:3<354::aid-ijc12>3.0.co;2-b

✦ Synopsis

The success of radiotherapy in eradicating tumours depends on the total radiation dose, but what limits this dose is the tolerance of the normal tissues within the treatment volume. Studies involving fibroblast survival have demonstrated the theoretical feasibility of a predictive assay of radiation sensitivity, but such an assay is still far from clinical application. Using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), we have quantified the initial ''apparent'' number of DNA doublestrand breaks (dsb) induced by the radiation as an alternative measure of sensitivity in 2 different normal cell types from the same patients, epidermal skin cells and lymphocytes. We found significant inter-individual variation in the measured dsb (1-5 dsb/Gy/DNA unit). We also found a linear correlation between molecular damage in lymphocytes and skin samples from the same patient (slope ‫؍‬ 0.83; r ‫؍‬ 0.694; p ‫؍‬ 0.0001). These results suggest that the initial number of dsb could be used as an indicator of the in vivo response to radiation.