Leukemia in Man Following Exposure to Ionizing Radiation

Acute Myelomonocytic Leukemia in a Patient with Hodgkin’s Disease

“…Evidence for the relationship between irradiation and leukemia exists from studies of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) on Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb explosions [34][35][36]; of patients with ankylosing spondylitis who received irradiation treatment to their spine [37,38]; of children who were ex posed to diagnostic irradiation during pregnancy [39,40].…”

Medical Radiations and Leukaemia: A Retrospective Survey

“…Other evidence (Court Brown and Doll, 1957;Brill et al, 1962) (Table VII). However, there were more patients with relatively high exposures in the acute and chronic granulocytic than in the control groups, and the chronic granulocytic group also showed a higher average score when weighted mean doses were used for the calculations (Table VIII).…”

“…The lack of dose estimations also makes it difficult to evaluate the recent finding by Stewart et al (1962) (Court Brown and Doll, 1957 ;Cronkite et al, 1960;Brill et al, 1962) and were applied either to the whole or to very substantial parts of the body. Only relatively few such "radiation leukaemias" have been reported: as late as 1960 their total, including the Japanese cases, was only 226 (Cronkite et al, 1960).…”

“…An important problem concerns the relationship between the size of the dose and the risk of leukaemogenesis, a linear (Lewis, 1957), quadratic (Burch, 1960), and quantal (Mewissen, 1959) relationship having been variously postulated and criticized (Brues, 1958 ;Lamerton, 1958). Because of the paucity of accepted cases and the lack of satisfactory dose measurements in some of them, the shape of the dose-response curve remains uncertain: there are indications that it may be linear at radiation levels exceeding 50-100 rads (Cronkite et al, 1960;Upton, 1961 ;Brill et al, 1962), but no satisfactory data exist below this range, and, in particular, it is unknown whether there is a threshold below which radiations do not cause leukaemia. Next to nothing is known about the effect, in the human, of partial (especially small-field) body irradiation.…”

“…This has been shown beyond doubt by the American studies on leukaemia incidence following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Wald, 1958;Heyssel et al, 1960;Brill et al, 1962) and by the British investigation of patients who had developed leukaemia after radiation therapy for ankylosing spondylitis (Abbatt and Lea, 1956;Court Brown and Doll, 1957). But although it is certain that radiations can cause leukaemia, very little is known about the actual part which they may play in producing the disease in the population at large.…”