Abstract |
During the recent years, photon radiation, such as X and gamma rays, is widely used in diagnostic and interventional radiology as well as in therapy, like in case of radiotherapy of cancer patients. Radiotherapy seems to play a dual role in the function of the immune system, leading to immunostimulation or immunosuppression. According to the literature, there has been an attempt to correlate the radiation dose provided during radiotherapy to stimulation or suppression of the immune system. Precisely, in a C57BL/6 mouse model, radiation doses lower than 0,1 Gy seemed to stimulate the immune system, while doses greater than 2 Gy suppressed the immune system. Based on these results, in the present worked we tried to investigate the correlation between immune stimulation or suppression with low doses of irradiation (0,04 and 0,1 Gy ) and a high dose of irradiation (2Gy). To this extend, spleens were isolated from cancer and control mice, irradiated using the above doses, and after culturing splenic leucocytes, the profile of T- lymphocytes (CD4, CD8, CD25) as well as the production of cytokines IL-2 and IL-10 in the supernatants of the cell cultures were determined. Although the main goal of this study was to observe whether the immunostimulatory doses could reverse the immunosuppressive state caused by cancer, the obtained results could not clearly demonstrate such phenomena.
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