Eye disorders occurred in people chronically exposed to low dose radiation as the results of radiological incidents in the Southern Ural

«Radiation and Risk», 2020, vol. 29, No. 4, pp.84-96

DOI: 10.21870/0131-3878-2020-29-4-84-96

Authors

Mikryukova L.D. ‒ Sen. Researcher, C. Sc., Med. Contacts: 68a Vorovsky Str., Chelyabinsk, 454076, Russia. Tel.: 8(351)778-08-25; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Shalaginov S.A. ‒ Sen. Researcher, C. Sc., Med. URCRM.

Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine, Chelyabinsk

Abstract

People of several settlements in the Southern Ural have been chronically exposed to radiation caused by contamination of the area and the Techa River with radioactive waste resulted from the Kyshtym disaster and other radiation incidents in Mayak, a nuclear reprocessing plant. The article presents results of the study of eye diseases special features in the residents of the affected territories. Two stages of the follow-up were performed from 1955 to 1965 and dominating eye disorders found in the first follow-up stage were caused by infections and parasites. In 2018 increase in glaucoma cases was observed: the disease was diagnosed in 3.6% of patients, chronically exposed to low dose radiation, in the first stage of follow-up glaucoma was diagnosed in 0.7% of the affected people. The growth, partly, may be caused by ageing of the population. Among chronically exposed population the cataract was the frequently diagnosed disease, senile and presenile forms were the most common among the older people. In both follow-up studies opacity in the cortical layers was the most common type of the lens change (54-63% of all types of the changes).

Key words
chronic ionizing radiation exposure, ophthalmic pathology, morphological types of cataracts, posterior subcapsular cataract, cortical cataract, nuclear cataract.

References

1. Ecological and health effects of the radiation accident of 1957 at the Mayak PA. Eds.: A.V. Akleyev, M.F. Kiselev. Moscow, Medbioextrem. Rus. Min. of Health, 2001. 290 p. (In Russian).

2. Akleyev A.V. Khronicheskiy luchevoy sindrom u zhiteley pribrezhnykh sel reki Techa [Chronic radiation syndrome in residents of coastal villages of the Techa river]. Chelyabinsk, Book, 2012. 464 p.

3. ICRP, 2012. ICRP statement on tissue reactions and early and late effects of radiation in normal tissues and organs ‒ threshold doses for tissue reactions in a radiation protection context. ICRP Publication 118. Ann. ICRP, 2012, vol. 41, no. 1-2, pp. 1-322.

4. Brown N.P. The lens is more sensitive to radiation than we had believed. Br. J. Ophthalmol., 1997, vol. 81, no. 4, pp. 257-259.

5. Blakely E.A., Kleiman N.J., Neriishi K., Chodick G., Chylack L.T., Cucinotta F.A., Minamoto A., Nakashima E., Kumagami T., Kitaoka T, Kanamoto T., Kiuchi Y., Chang P., Fujii N., Shore R.E. Radiation cataractogenesis: epidemiology and biology. Radiat. Res., 2010, vol. 173, no. 5, pp. 709-717.

6. Ainsbury E.A., Bouffler S.D., Dörr W., Graw J., Muirhead C.R., Edwards A.A., Cooper J. Radiation cata-ractogenesis: a review of recent studies. Radiat. Res., 2009, vol. 172, no. 1, pp. 1-9.

7. Mikryukova L.D., Akleyev A.V. Cataract in the chronically exposed residents of the Techa riverside villag-es. Radiat. Environ. Biophys., 2017, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 329-335.

8. Mikryukova L.D., Krestinina L.Yu., Epiphanova S.B. A study of layered lens changes in the process of cataract formation in persons exposed to radiation as a result of radiation accidents in the Southern Urals. Radiatsionnaya gigiyena ‒ Radiation Hygiene, 2018, vol.11, no. 4, pp. 17-28. (In Russian).

9. Nakashima E., Neriishi K., Minamoto A. A reanalysis of atomic-bomb cataract data, 2000-2002: a thresh-old analysis. Health Phys., 2006, vol. 90, no. 2, pp.154-160.

10. Worgul B.V., Kundiyev Y.I., Sergiyenko N.M., Chumak V.V., Vitte P.M., Medvedovsky C., Bakhanova E.V., Junk A.K., Kyrychenko O.Y., Musijachenko N.V., Shylo S.A., Vitte O.P., Xu S., Xue X., Shore R.E. Cataracts among Chernobyl clean-up workers: implications regarding permissible eye exposures. Radiat. Res., 2007, vol. 167, no. 2, pp. 233-243.

11. WHO Manual of the International statistical classification of diseases, injuries, and causes of death. Based on the Recommendations of the Ninth Revision Conference, 1975 and Adopted by the Twenty-ninth World Health Assembly. Geneva, 1977. 755 p.

12. Chylack L.T. Jr, Wolfe J.K., Singer D.M., Leske M.C., Bullimore M.A., Bailey I.L., Friend J., McCarthy D., Wu S.Y. The Lens Opacities Classification System III. The Longitudinal Study of Cataract Study Group. Arch. Ophthalmol., 1993, vol. 111, no. 6, pp. 831-836.

13. Cumming R.G., Mitchell P. Alcohol, smoking, and cataracts: the Blue Mountains Eye Study. Arch. Ophthalmol., 1997, vol.115, no. 10, pp. 1296-1303.

14. Wu R., Wang J.J., Mitchell P., Lamoureux E.L., Zheng Y., Rochtchina E., Tan A.G., Wong T.Y. Smoking, socioeconomic factors, and age-related cataract: The Singapore Malay Eye study. Arch. Ophthalmol., 2010, vol. 128, no. 8, pp. 1029-1035.

Full-text article (in Russian)