Abstract
Male and female hybrid BCF1 (C57BL/6 BdxBALB/c Bd) were exposed to total neutron doses of 0.06, 0.12, 0.24, and 0.48 Gy in fractions over a period of 24 weeks. The fractionation regimens were: 24 weekly fractions of 0.0025 Gy, 12 fractions of 0.01 Gy every 2 weeks, 6 fractions of 0.04 Gy every 4 weeks, and 3 fractions of 0.16 Gy every 8 weeks. In order to detect any change in susceptibility with age over the period of exposures from 16 weeks to 40 weeks of age, mice were exposed to single doses of 0.025, 0.05, 0.10, and 0.2 Gy at 16 and 40 weeks of age. These experiments were designed to test whether the initial parts of the dose-response relationships for life shortening and cancer induction could be determined economically by using fractionated exposures and whether or not the initial slopes were linear. The conclusions were that for life shortening and most radiogenic cancers, the dose-effect curves are linear and that fractionation of the neutron dose has no effect on the magnitude of the response of equal total doses over the range of doses studied. The ratio of such initial slopes and comparable linear initial slopes for a reference radiation should provide maximum and constant relative biological effectiveness values.
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This research was sponsored by the Office of Health and Environmental Research, US Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-840R21400 with the Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc.
The submitted manuscript has been authored by a contractor of the US Government under contract No. DE-AC05-840R21400. Accordingly, the US Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce the published form of this contribution, or allow others to do so, for US Government purposes.
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Storer, J.B., Fry, R.J.M. On the shape of neutron dose-effect curves for radiogenic cancers and life shortening in mice. Radiat Environ Biophys 34, 21–27 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01210541
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01210541