Acute radiation syndrome-related gene expression in irradiated peripheral blood cell populations

In a nuclear or radiological event, an early diagnostic tool is needed to distinguish the worried well from those individuals who may later develop life-threatenFing hematologic acute radiation syndrome. We examined the contribution of the peripheral blood's cell populations on radiation-induced gene expression (GE) changes. EDTA-whole-blood from six healthy donors was X-irradiated with 0 and 4Gy and T-lymphocytes, B-lymphocytes, NK-cells and granulocytes were separated using immunomagnetic methods. GE were examined in cell populations and whole blood. The cell populations contributed to the total RNA amount with a ratio of 11.6 for T-lymphocytes, 1.2 for B-cells, 1.2 for NK-cells, 1.0 for granulocytes. To estimate the contribution of GE per cell population, the baseline (0Gy) and the radiation-induced fold-change in GE relative to unexposed was considered for each gene. The T-lymphocytes (74.8%/80.5%) contributed predominantly to the radiation-induced up-regulation observed for <i>FDXR/DDB2</i> and the B-lymphocytes (97.1%/83.8%) for down-regulated <i>POU2AF1/WNT3</i> with a similar effect on whole blood gene expression measurements reflecting a corresponding order of magnitude. T- and B-lymphocytes contributed predominantly to the radiation-induced up-regulation of <i>FDXR/DDB2</i> and down-regulation of <i>POU2AF1/WNT3</i>. This study underlines the use of <i>FDXR/DDB2</i> for biodosimetry purposes and <i>POU2AF1/WNT3</i> for effect prediction of acute health effects.