[Searching Radiation Countermeasures using the Model of Prolonged Irradiation of Mice with Low Dose Rate and...

Different radiomodificators (cytokine betaleukine, antioxidant phenoxan, antigipoksant limontar and nucleoside riboxin) were investigated on mice for evaluating their radiation protective capacity against prolonged (21 h) exposure at a dose of 12.6 Gy at a low dose rate of 10 mGy/min. Bone marrow cellularity and endogenic CFUs were used as evaluation criteria 9 days after exposure. Simultaneously, expression of the heat shock proteins of 25, 70 and 90 kDa in unexposed mice bone marrow was studied 2, 24 and 48 h after injections. Betaleukine only had a positive significant effect in both tests in the variants of 50 mcg/kg and 3 mcg/kg when administered 2 h and 22 h before exposure, correspondingly. Effects of betaleukine HSPs on expression were both stimulating and inhibiting, that was in contradiction with a constant positive effect in 5 experiments on exposed mice for each betaleukine variant. It argues against the vital role of HSPs in the betaleukine antiradiation effect. In 2 experiments with high temperatures betaleukine administered at a dose of 50 mcg/kg evoked a very high HSP-70 gene expression after 24 h, and mice exposed to irradiation at that time in a parallel experiment showed an increased radiation effect. It corresponds to the idea that HSPs serve a stress indicator.