Mice exposed to radiation are made better by injected proteins

Jun 26, 2012 08:49 GMT  ·  By

In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, researchers have been constantly working towards coming up with ways to treat health issues that result from radiation exposure.

Apparently, two drugs already being used in human medicine as anti-clotting agents can also help in counteracting radiation sickness.

For those unaware, coming in contact with radioactive compounds results in loss of bone marrow cells and the destruction of the internal organs, which means that both the body's blood cell production and immune system are compromised.

Up until recently, it was believed that these damages done to living organisms were irreversible.

However, recent reports indicate that thrombomodulin and activated protein C can successfully fight back said affections.

Thus, experiments made on mice previously exposed to relatively high doses of radiation showed that their general wellbeing significantly improved, seeing how the overall survival rates of these animals went up by 40-80%.

What is even more interesting is that these drugs are by no means newly developed ones.

On the contrary: thrombomodulin – as its name suggests – is presently being used in Japan to treat thrombosis (i.e. intravascular coagulation of the blood), whereas activated protein C used to be the drug of choice when it came to treating inflammations caused by blood poisoning.

As Nature informs us, biologist Hartmut Geiger from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio and his team discovered that, if administrated within 24 hours after the moment when the radiation exposure took place, both these drugs can stimulate bone marrow regeneration.

In turn, this will lead to an increase in the production of white blood cells and therefore increase the odds of survival.

For the time being, other researchers who are investigating the same issue agree that it is a good thing that Hartmut Geiger and his team successfully used what was already available on the pharmaceutical market in order to treat a serious health condition.