What kind of prior low dose radiation does the adaptive response induce?

Described are the adaptive response (AR) and genetic instability (GI) induced by different kind of low dose radiation (LDR) and their relation with the bystander effect. For this, human normal cells were placed at 2.65 m distance from the target of National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) to see the biological effect of LDR of mixed radiations (1-1.5 mGy/day; mixture of 94% gamma ray, 1.9% neutron (N) and particle ions mainly containing proton (P) in the rest). Cells were then irradiated with 1.5 Gy X-ray. No effect on the lethality was observed as compared with control cells without LDR. The mutation on hprt gene was found significantly elevated 2-30 days after LDR, suggesting that GI had been induced. To see the effect of each radiation on GI, gamma ray (137Cs), N (241Am-Be) and heavy ion (HIMAC He, C and Fe) as LDR were separately irradiated to cells with total 1 mGy/7-8 hr and then acutely with the X-ray. He and C ions were found to promote mutation 1.9 and 4.0 times higher on frequencies, respectively, and N, to reduce the mutation rate to 15% (AR). Results indicated that cell responses were quite different dependently on linear energy transfer. The probability of hit number of ions in the cell population was calculated to be 61, 15 and 2% for He, C and Fe, respectively, suggesting an existence of considerable number of cells not irradiated. Presence of a gap-junction specific inhibitor (GSI) at LDR resulted in normalization of mutation rate in all groups of cells, suggesting that the bystander effect through cell-cell signal transduction affected the cell response to X-irradiation. For AR induction by N, when 1.5% of cells in culture were irradiated by P in NIRS SPICE as LDR, AR in mutation was observed and was inhibited by GSI, suggesting that N completely destroyed the hit cell but concomitantly yielded recoil P substantially acted as LDR. Above findings indicated that the exact radiation risk can be only assessed on bases of the effects of individual radiation on the directly and indirectly exposed cells and their interaction. (K.T.)