According to a review of the most recent data published in The BMJ today, low doses of ionizing radiation exposure are linked to a slightly elevated excess risk of heart disease.
These results “have ramifications for patients who get radiation exposure as part of their medical care, as well as politicians involved in regulating radiation hazards to radiation workers and the public,” the researchers write.
These concerns “should now be carefully considered in protection against radiation in medicine and elsewhere,” according to an editorial that is linked.
It is commonly known that high radiation exposure can harm the heart, although there is less conclusive evidence connecting low radiation exposure to heart disease (such as scatter radiation dose from radiotherapy or employment in the nuclear sector).
An worldwide team of researchers searched scholarly databases for studies analyzing associations between various cardiovascular illnesses and radiation exposure in order to fill this knowledge gap (mostly radiotherapy and occupational exposures).
They eliminated datasets that were either uninformative or mostly duplicated those of others, leaving 93 research that could be analyzed that were mostly published in the last ten years. These studies assessed the frequency (incidence) and mortality of several types of vascular illnesses over a wide range of dosages, quick and sustained exposures.
The researchers discovered consistent evidence for a dose-dependent increase in cardiovascular risks over a broad range of radiation levels after accounting for other significant factors including age at exposure.
As an illustration, the relative risk per gray (Gy) rose for all forms of cardiovascular disease and for some particular ones of cardiovascular disease, and there was a higher relative risk per dose unit at lower dose ranges (less than 0.1 Gy), and also for lower dose rates (multiple exposures over hours to years).
At a population level, excess absolute risks ranged from 2.33% per Gy for a current England and Wales population to 3.66% per Gy for Germany, largely reflecting the underlying rates of cardiovascular disease mortality in these populations.
