The Local Greying of Hair in Mice Treated with X Rays and Radiomimetic Drugs

Abstract

THE exposure of living organisms to sublethal doses of radiation causes a number of changes, many of which can be also produced by radiomimetic drugs (Boyland, 1951). One of these is the local greying of the hair in mice described by Hance and Murphy (1926) and recently investigated by Chase (1949) following exposure to X rays. The same effect produced by implantation of plutonium has been described by Lisco, Finkel and Brues (1947). Chase (1949) considers that the measurement of the effect is suitable for the quantitative assay of biological effects of radiation. A very similar bleaching or greying of hair caused by injection of nitrogen mustard was described by Boyland, Clegg, Koller, Rhoden and Warwick (1948), and malignant tumours following nitrogen mustard treatment (in some cases in immediate contact with grey patches induced by the injection) have been described by Boyland and Horning (1949) and by Heston (1950).The relationship between induction of grey hair and of cancer is investigated in the present paper. Localised greying of hair has now been induced in mice by a number of chemical agents which are known to be carcinogenic or mutagenic or both carcinogenic and mutagenic, or might be suspected of being so. The change is generally produced most readily by water-soluble substances but, with this limitation, the change might be used as a test indicating carcinogenicity. In this respect it is probably less specific, but similar to (1) the inhibition oftumour growth or body growth by carcinogenic compounds investigated by Haddow and his collaborators (Haddow, 1938), (2) the production of the specific chromosome damage described by Muller and Painter (1929) following X rays and by Darlington and Koller (1947) following mustard gas application, or (3) the increase in the mutation rate as described by Muller (1928) for X rays and by Auerbach, Robson and Carr (1947) for vesicants. The inhibition of growth and the induction of chromosome abnormalities in cells of small mammals can be observed readily with substances which are only very slightly soluble in water, but it is difficult to produce mutations in bacteria, Neurospora and Drosophila with substances which are not water-soluble.Because the greying of hair described in the present paper is a discontinuous permanent change in a part of the soma, it had been suggested (Boyland, 1949) that it might be a somatic mutation and so analogous to the malignant change if the latter were a somatic mutation. The conception of somatic mutation in adult animals is, however, entirely hypothetical. If a mutation can only be proved by breeding and examination of the succeeding generations, then proof

Irradiation-induced hair graying in mice: an experimental model to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions targeting oxidative stress, DNA damage prevention, and cellular senescence

“…Mouse models, in particular, have been used extensively to investigate radiation-induced hair graying [107,108,110,128] (Fig. 1).…”

“…Radiation exposure, particularly to ionizing radiation, causes premature hair graying and shows similar cellular outcomes as in age-related hair graying [90,[101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111]. Ionizing radiation increases the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and DNA damage.…”

Experimentelle Untersuchungen über Strahlenschutzwirkung am Meerschweinchen

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