Effects of radiation on development, especially of the nervous system

Humans and other organisms are exposed to ionizing radiations from a variety of natural and man-made sources. Radiation may cause mutations and chromosome abnormalities, cell-killing, alterations and transformations in cell growth, and carcinogenetic changes. This paper considers principally the cell-killing and nonlethal cell alterations in developing laboratory mammals and humans, especially the nervous system, that follow irradiation and often lead to malformation and disturbed function, but at certain stages to restitution of the injury. Most of what we know about the mechanisms of these radiation effects in man is derived from animal experiments, especially with rats. The few observations in humans have corresponded closely to them. We illustrate the cellular effects and malformative results with an example of cell-killing in the developing cortex of a human fetus exposed to therapeutic radiation in utero; a current timetable of the malformative and other effects of radiation on rats during development from which expectations of human effects might be extrapolated; examples of hydrocephalus produced in rats; low-dose alterations of nerve cells in rats; and a microcephalic Japanese boy exposed in utero to the atomic bomb at Hiroshima in 1945.