Effect of Low Dose Ionising Radiation on the Amount of Mitochondrial Common Deletion and D-Loop Tandem Duplication in Human Peripheral Whole Blood

Abstract

The Hungarian Defence Forces assume a significant role in disaster prevention, including nuclear accident prevention tasks, so both the command and executive staff can stay in the higher-than-natural dose area. The current “gold standard” microscopic method aimed at determining the radiation dose suffered is the dicentric chromosome assay (DIC), although sensitive and accurate, it is very time-consuming. Monitoring changes in the amount of common deletion (CD) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and in the D-loop a tandem duplication (TD) of mtDNA may be a reliable marker of exposure to ionising radiation. This work used the PCR method to investigate how CD and TD change in human blood samples after X-ray irradiation. The CD appears to be a particularly useful marker, as its maximum is below the threshold for clinical symptoms. This work is the first to show the relationship between radiation and tandem duplication. The TD we investigated occurredmore frequently in irradiated human blood samples than native ones. During the future development of the diagnostic tool, both CD and TD are informative and would be used together in a PCR system to detect acute and cumulative irradiation. In recent years, more and more health institutions are dealing with molecular biological diagnostic work. In a disaster situation, if the laboratory capacity of the Hungarian Defence Forces would not be sufficient for this, more external laboratories can be involved for PCR measurements than for traditional microscopic work.