Antinuclear

New study shows low level radiation damage to nuclear bomb survivors

“This study provides the strongest evidence available to date that radiation may increase the rates of stroke and heart disease at moderate dose levels..”

A-bomb survivor data affirm radiation/CVD risk link the heart.org January 19, 2010 | Reed Miller Hiroshima, Japan – Fifty-three-year follow-up data confirm that Japanese atomic-bomb survivors exposed to at least 0.5 Gy of radiation have an excess risk of dying of heart disease or stroke .

A new analysis of data collected from 1950 to 2003 from the 86 611 survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was published online January 14, 2010 in BMJ. The new analysis, by Yukiko Shimizu (Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hiroshima, Japan) and colleagues, shows that stroke and heart disease caused about one-third as many radiation-related “excess deaths” as cancer among the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors.

The new paper report updates the 1997 data from the same cohort with about 25% more deaths and therefore is “substantially stronger,” Shimizu et al explain.

“This study provides the strongest evidence available to date that radiation may increase the rates of stroke and heart disease at moderate dose levels (mainly 0.5-2 Gy),” the study’s authors conclude. “Given the widespread use of multiple computed tomography scans and other relatively high-dose diagnostic medical procedures, as well as radiotherapy that exposes the heart, the implications are substantial, insofar as effects occur at doses under 1 Gy.”……………..

In an accompanying editorial , Dr Mark Little (Imperial College London, UK) says the study by Shimizu et al “adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting an association between cardiovascular disease and exposure to [low to moderate] levels of radiation, as well as the well-known (and mechanistically well-understood) association at high doses.”

Radiation and CV risk

January 20, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive