Saturday, October 24, 2009

Low dose radiation 'harms heart' (UK)

"Low doses of radiation can cause cardiovascular disease, according to work carried out by mathematicians at Imperial College. They have constructed a model which suggests that the risk would increase as the dose increases. Studies have shown that nuclear workers exposed to long-term doses of radiation have higher levels of heart disease. But experts said it was too early to draw such conclusions without the biological research to back it up. The team at Imperial College, writing in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, say they explored a novel mechanism that suggests radiation kills monocytes, which travel across the arterial wall to mop up a protein called MCP-1" - BBC

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