Abstract
The concept of radiation-induced hormesis, whereby a low dose is beneficial and a high dose is detrimental, has been gaining attention in the fields of molecular biology, environmental toxicology and radiation biology. There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of hormetic dose response not only in the radiation field, but also with molecular agents. However, there is continuing debate on the magnitude and mechanism of radiation hormetic dose response, which could make further contributions, as a research tool, to science and perhaps eventually to public health due to potential therapeutic benefits for society. The biological phenomena of low dose ionising radiation (LDIR) includes bystander effects, adaptive response, hypersensitivity, radioresistance and genomic instability. In this review, the beneficial and the detrimental effects of LDIR-induced hormesis are explored, together with an overview of its underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms that may potentially provide an insight to the therapeutic implications to human health in the future.
Highlights
Radiation hormesis is the phenomena whereby low doses of ionising radiation provoke a stimulatory or beneficial effect in otherwise unstressed cells, but increasingly larger doses are harmful [1]
Low-dose radiation exposures can be used as an experimental tool to induce bio-responses such as the bystander effect, adaptive response, HRS, radioresistance, and genomic instability
In view of present-day radiotherapy that utilises photon, neutron, proton, and C-ions, it should be noted that radiation hormesis is dependent on the linear energy transfer (LET) of the radiation modality [75,86,88,89,92,97,98]
Summary
Radiation hormesis is the phenomena whereby low doses of ionising radiation provoke a stimulatory or beneficial effect in otherwise unstressed cells, but increasingly larger doses are harmful [1]. Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR 2006), and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement (NCRP) have adopted 100 mSv or less as low dose [3,4,5,6]. Ionising radiations are forms of electromagnetic waves (γ, X-rays) or particles (neutrons, protons, β or α) that are typically used in medical interventions such as diagnostic radiology, nuclear medicine and radiation therapy [23], with other situations of utilisation and exposure arising in industry With these increasing involvements of radiations, the low-dose ionising radiation (LDIR) effects on humans are of great concern to public health. Firstly briefly discussed, followed by a review of LDIR phenomena
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