The accumulation and destructive action of astatine 211 (eka-iodine) in the thyroid gland of rats and monkeys.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION IN 1940 Corson et al. isolated a radioactive element, the chemical, physical and nuclear properties of which established it to be element 85, the last of the halogen group (1). This element, now named astatine (from the Greek aararos, “unstable”) was produced by the transmutation of bismuth by alpha-particles accelerated at 30 Mev1 in the 60-inch cyclotron at the Crocker Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley. Hamilton and Soley compared the metabolism of I131 and At211 in the guinea pig and demonstrated that At211, like I131, was accumulated by the thyroid gland. This work included the use of not only normal animals but also guinea pigs in which thyrotoxicosis had been produced by the administration of the thyrotropic hormone (2). Later, a more detailed report was presented by Hamilton et al., which was concerned with not only the metabolism but also the biologic effects of astatine in rats and monkeys. In this work, changes due to the destructive action of astatine in the thyroid ...