Evidence for individual differences in the radiosensitivity of human skin

Previously published clinical data have been re-analysed to investigate individual differences in the radiosensitivity of human skin. In the clinical studies, acute and late skin reactions were recorded for 254 breast cancer patients receiving radiotherapy to the internal mammary nodes following simple or modified radical mastectomy. Each patient was treated bilaterally with different fractionation schedules to the right and left fields. Patients were assigned prospectively to 10 different treatment groups of 11-35 patients each, with all patients in a group receiving the same pair of fractionation schedules to the right and left fields. In the present study, correlations between the skin reactions in the two treatment fields per patient were investigated. For each of three different endpoints--peak reflectance measure of erythema, peak acute skin reaction score, and a ranking measure of the progression rate of telangiectasia--significant correlations were found between the levels of skin injury to the right and left treatment fields of the patients in most treatment groups. Although there were correlations between the absorbed doses in the right and left fields, statistical analyses indicated that dose effects were not sufficient to explain fully the patient-to-patient differences in skin response. Thus, these data provide evidence for the existence of individual differences in the radiation response of human skin, both for early and late effects. Whether these differences are dominated by heterogeneity in intrinsic cell radiosensitivity or by other factors has yet to be determined. However, there was no clear evidence of a correlation between the acute and late endpoints, suggesting that the individual differences in radiosensitivity are not dominated by a common genetic component expressed equally in all cells.