Unstable chromosome aberrations on peripheral blood lymphocytes from patients with cervical uterine cancer following radiotherapy

Absorbed dose determination is an important step for risk assessment related to an exposure to ionizing radiation. However, physical dosimetry cannot be always performed, principally in the case of retrospective estimates. In this context, the use of bioindicators (biological effects) has been proposed, which defines the so-called biological dosimetry. In particular, scoring of unstable chromosomes aberrations (dicentrics, centric rings and fragments) of peripheral blood lymphocytes, while is the most reliable biological method for estimating individual exposure to ionizing radiation. In this work, blood samples from 5 patients, with cervical uterine cancer, were evaluated after partial-body radiotherapy with a source of 69 Co. For this, conventional cytogenetic method was employed, based on Giemsa coloration and fluorescence in situ hybridization, in order to correlate the frequency of unstable chromosome aberrations of blood lymphocytes with absorbed dose, as a result of the radiotherapy. A good agreement was observed between the frequency of chromosome aberrations scored and the values of dose previously calculated by physical dosimetry during patient's radiotherapy. The results presented in this work point out the importance of concerning analyses of unstable chromosome aberrations as biological dosimeter in the investigation of partial-body exposure to ionizing radiation. (author)