ISSUES IN CYTOGENETIC BIOLOGICAL DOSIMETRY - EMPHASIS ON RADIATION ENVIRONMENTS IN SPACE

Issues central to the reliability of cytogenetic biodosimetry are pres ented. Although it now appears that cytogenetic biodosimetry can be us ed reliably to reconstruct radiation dose after acute, uniform whole-b ody exposure (albeit within certain dose ranges), additional data are required to fully validate cytogenetic biodosimetry for the protracted and complex exposure conditions in space, Approaches are presented th at could be used to obtain the data necessary for validation, It also appears that the use of dicentric aberrations for biodosimetry on miss ions lasting several months or more may not be reliable because of the large variability observed among individuals in the rate of loss of c ells with dicentrics, making back-extrapolations uncertain. This may b e testable, however, by comparing the results for dicentrics and trans locations obtained by biodosimetry with the radiation dosimetry obtain ed on board the spacecraft, In addition to these and several other iss ues, estimates are provided of the current limitations of detection of dicentrics and reciprocal translocations. (C) 1997 by Radiation Resea rch Society.