Experimental central nervous system injury after charged-particle irradiation

This paper reports on the development of definite paralytic signs, used as an endpoint for the determination of latent periods, which reflect the presence of damage but do not reveal its pathologic characteristics. Paralysis was a nonstochastic effect for which both the probability and severity vary with dose and for which a threshold of dose-response existed. Histologically the primary lesion induced by both charged-particle irradiation and X- or γ-radiation was demyelination and necrosis of the white matter. This has been attributed generally to damage to the oligodendrocytes. The spinal cord tolerance toward fractionated helium radiation was similar to X- or γ-radiation, but the spinal cord was much more sensitive to heavier charged-particle radiation. There was much less sparing and decreased tissue tolerance in the high-LET spread Bragg peak regions of carbon- and neon-ion beams that in the plateau regions. A radiologic model for effects in CNS after charged-particle radiation indicated that the α/β values, a measure of tissue repair capacity, increased with LET as predicted. The α/β values for spinal cord injury with neon range from 2.52 to 12.0 depending on the LET; for helium, the α/β value was 1.52, similar to values for X rays