Impact of radiobiological considerations on epidemiological inferences of age-dependent radiosensitivity

Current epidemiological studies of the age-dependent risk of radiogenic carcinomas are based on populations still in the early stages of cancer expression. The result is a set of logical uncertainties concerning the manner in which inferences may be drawn from the existing data. These uncertainties may be formalized and examined through the application of various radiobiological principles developed from more fundamental experimental data. Chief amongst these considerations are the time course of tumor expression, the role of relative and absolute risk models, the distribution of effects between initiation and promotion, the age-dependent fraction of time a critical cell remains in radiosensitive stages and the combinatorics of the critical cellular subpopulations. Each of these and the combinatorics of the critical cellular subpopulations. Each of these principles are examined in light of their impact on the structuring of epidemiologic data and the drawing of inferences concerning age-dependent radiogenic risk. The data on atomic bomb survivors are employed as a relevant example