Genetic predisposition to radiation-related cancer and potential implications for risk assessment

Several lines of evidence suggest that risk estimates for cancer associated with radiation exposure incorporate individuals who are more and less inherently susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of radiation, and the technology to further evaluate this issue is now available. For example, genome-wide association scan studies could be undertaken to address, at least in part, the direction of causality in the observations of differential sensitivity to radiomimetic agents in cancer cases compared with normal individuals, thereby building on previous observations that sensitivity to these agents is higher in apparently normal individuals carrying gene mutations in NBS and ATM. Direct studies of risk of second cancers in relation to radiation are underway, and some results have been reported (e.g. for the PRDM1 gene as related to sensitivity to radiation-related cancers after treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma). It is important to understand the risk synergies between variants affecting associations with various cancers defining susceptibility in unexposed populations and the excess risk in populations therapeutically or occupationally exposed to radiation for the purpose of risk protection, especially as additional baseline risk variants are discovered in increasingly large-scale analyses. While there are studies that are beginning to address these questions, there have been no compelling new discoveries, to date, to indicate that predisposition information should be included in risk assessment. The conclusions in ICRP Publications 79 and 103 appear relevant today.