Renal response assayed by survival of tubule epithelial cells

The epithelium of the renal tubules is essentially non-proliferative and hence is slow to be depleted after irradiation. Ultimately, however, depletion occurs. If cells survive within a tubule they regenerate the epithelial lining. After higher doses, e.g. greater than 12 Gy, some tubules are completely depopulated of epithelium giving rise to a histological picture of empty tubules interspersed with regenerated tubules. It is assumed that nephrons are all essentially the same size, that cell survival is a random probability and that, therefore, when a proportion of tubules are completely devoid of epithelium, those that aren't have regenerated from one or a few cells, the distribution of numbers of survivors per tubule following Poisson statistics. Based on these assumptions it is possible to determine a dose-survival relationship for renal tubule cells