Developments in Brief : Red Blood Cell Test Quickly Detects Radiation, Toxic Chemical Exposure

A new biological test to detect exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals has been developed by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and tested on survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and on blood drawn from firefighters who battled the blaze at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union.

The new assay monitors changes in red blood cells. It is considered as accurate as current techniques, but can be performed much more quickly, according to chemist Ronald H. Jensen, who reported his results in the current issue of Science magazine.

Jensen said in a telephone interview that the test may prove to be an important new diagnostic tool for cancer since there appears to be a correlation between the number of mutant cells observed in an individual’s blood cells with that person’s risk of developing cancer. The test provides a better way of measuring the mutant cells.

Biochemist Richard Albertini of the University of Vermont, who has developed a more complex test for radiation and chemical exposure that employs white blood cells, said the new assay is very promising and should be complimentary to his own technique.

Epidemiologist Richard Everson of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said Jensen’s assay “has a number of technical advantages” compared to existing techniques. Everson is now organizing a study at the University of Alabama and at Duke University in which both Jensen’s and Albertini’s techniques will be used to study the potential hazards of drugs used in the treatment of cancer.

Many anti-cancer drugs are themselves carcinogenic, although the so-called secondary cancers produced by the drugs do not occur until many years after the initial cancer has been treated. Everson hopes that the new tests might eventually be used to predict the risk of secondary cancers for patients treated by chemotherapy.

Both Albertini and Jensen would also like to use their techniques to study the large numbers of people who were exposed to radiation by the Chernobyl accident. It already has been tested on blood samples from 16 firefighters who helped extinguish the blaze at the nuclear power plant. The blood was obtained by Dr. Robert Gale of UCLA, who did bone marrow transplants on Chernobyl victims. One Soviet scientist has expressed an interest in visiting the Livermore lab to learn Jensen’s technique, Jensen said, and the National Academy of Sciences is now trying to work out the details of the trip.

Jensen is also planning a study of workers at a nuclear power plant in Quebec.