Tuesday, November 5, 2013

2008 Paper by French Researchers Says There Is No Histological/Morphological Change in Rats' Hearts after Chronic Ingestion of Cesium-137


French researchers concluded in their paper published in 2008 that there was no histological and morphological change and no arrhythmia in rats' hearts after chronic ingestion of low levels of cesium-137, though they did observe cardiovascular system impairments.

The researchers were trying to determine whether chronic ingestion of cesium-137 caused cardiovascular system impairment observed in children and liquidators after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

The researchers' conclusion runs counter to the assertion by several researchers like Dr. Yury Bandazhevsky, former director of the Medical Institute in Gomel, Belarus, that cesium accumulates in hearts, causes heart arrhythmia and results in histological and morphological change. In fact, after Dr. Bandazhevsky made lecture tours in Japan earlier this year, it is widely believed as truism, at least among lay people (non-researcher).

From Cardiovascular Toxicology March 2008, Volume 8, Issue 1, pp 33-40, via Springer Link (emphasis is mine):

Chronic Contamination of Rats with 137Cesium Radionuclide: Impact on the Cardiovascular System (Yann Guéguen,Philippe Lestaevel,Line Grandcolas,Cédric Baudelin,Stéphane Grison, Jean-René Jourdain,Patrick Gourmelon,Maâmar Souidi)

Abstract:

Cardiovascular system impairment has been observed in children and in liquidators exposed to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. No experimental studies of animals have analyzed whether these disorders might be attributed to chronic ingestion of low levels of cesium 137 (137Cs). Biochemical, physiological, and molecular markers of the cardiovascular system were analyzed in rats exposed through drinking water to 137Cs at a dose of 500 Bq kg−1 (6500 Bq l−1). Plasma concentrations of CK and CK-MB were higher (+52%, P < 0.05) in contaminated rats. No histological alteration of the heart was observed, but gene expression was modified in the atria. Specifically, levels of ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) and BNP (brain natriuretic peptide) gene expression increased significantly (P < 0.05). ECG analysis did not disclose any arrhythmia except ST- and RT-segment shortening (−9% and −11%, respectively, P < 0.05) in rats exposed to 137Cs. Mean blood pressure decreased (−10%, P < 0.05), and its circadian rhythm disappeared. Overall, chronic contamination by an extreme environmental dose of 137Cs for 3 months did not result in cardiac morphological changes, but the cardiovascular system impairments we observed could develop into more significant changes in sensitive animals or after longer contamination.


(H/T Dr. Masahiro Kami)

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why do you post this shit here, man?

Anonymous said...

On this day in 1944 B Reactor at Hanford went critical. It's not peer-reviewed science, just a small story from a downwinder from St. George
http://www.skousen.name/id187.htm

Anonymous said...

Relationship between caesium (137Cs) load, cardiovascular symptoms, and source of food in 'Chernobyl' children -- preliminary observations after intake of oral apple pectin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15635491

Anonymous said...

Increased 137caesium whole body radioactivity in high-performance athletes. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2108095

Anonymous said...

Anon at the top, there are many who think it is Bandazhevsky's papers that are sh_t.

Anonymous said...

I started to view Bandazhevsky's work with caution after seeing him collaborating with a Japanese who deliberately withheld information about thyroid study to further her cause.

Anonymous said...

Everything 'proven' by sience is just temporarly. Time will tell, but in the meantime the Japanese are the guinea pigs...

Anonymous said...

3 months for low level radiations studies on rats, is it a serious length for a study?. Shouldn't it be years (1, 2, 3, 5, 10 years). I respect your work La Primavera but this actual study in the abstract accept the fact that cesium has some effect on heart for liquidators and children. What about the HBO winning documentary, Chernobyl's heart? Are all these kids faking something? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFwGEsJg2MI). Bandazhevsky went to jail for 5 years (he was sentenced 8 yeras) mainly for his studies on children and when he was released earlier he went to work for french hospital in Clermont Ferrand (a public one state owned CHU). Do you think French state would have taken a fraud, a guy who was not competent in France for this type of studies (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Bandazhevsky)? If you are busting myths you should as well devote one of your reflexion to another french study published beginning of this october that showed that depression does not induce cancer or increase the risk of cancer (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/.../2013/09/26/aje.kwt217). Basically the depressed people in Fukushima won't develop cancer because of their worries.

Anonymous said...

Here is the 15 years study on depression and cancer complete link (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/09/26/aje.kwt217) a 15 years study on people not on rats. For animals facing problems in high radiation environment , iitate horses seemed to have received attention from the Guardian recently(http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/27/fukushima-horse-breeder-radiation-animals). But hey nothing proven!

Anonymous said...

In a Love/hate relationship with your banner again, Laprimavera? This new one is too generic and blah. :-((

Anonymous said...

French researchers, eh?

Reminds me of that French island filled with nuclear waste for the past half decade that could disintegrate and screw the entire area any day now.

But hey, don't worry. 2008 paper says all okay. Conveniently.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Sorry about the "blah" banner. I hope you can manage to ignore.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

Anon at 2:23am, the French paper abstract says there was no histological and morphological change in rats' hearts. That's where Dr. Bandazhevsky disagrees. There are pathologists who disagree with Dr. Bandazhevsky after examining his samples.

The paper abstract does say there were cardiac impairments in those rats, as I wrote in the first paragraph.

Anonymous said...

Yuri Bandazhevsky did experimental studies on rats. See here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3fFCVXEJlbvQkluX2tocjVZd2c/edit?pli=1
page 11 ff
or download this:
http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEUQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fenfants-tchernobyl-belarus.org%2Fextra%2Fpdf-divers%2Ftelecharge.php%3Fpdf%3Detb-138.pdf&ei=Ipl6UvqZIsjfswbq9IC4BA&usg=AFQjCNGW2DqooI7gDa7YwBmR2_TW7Z_bRw&bvm=bv.55980276,d.Yms ("Clinical and experimental aspects of the effect of incorporated radionuclides upon the organism"; study from 1995, released by The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Belarus)
Continuing experiments have been inhibited by sending him to jail.

What makes this french study interesting is that all the authors are affiliated to the IRSN, the french Governmental department for radioprotection and nuclear security, founded in 2002.This organisation is the successor of the IPSN (Institut de protection et de sûreté nucléaire). You may be interested to hear that the IPSN invited Y. Bandazhevsky to Paris around 1995 to held lectures. Then, he was visited in Gomel and Minsk by a member group and gave them the study above (Clinical and experimental study...) The IPNS and Gomel State Medical Institute planned to collaborate in research when all of a sudden this project stopped. Source: W. Tchertkoff "Le crime de Tchernobyl".

Why? Instead of immediately working on this field they waited for more than 10 years? To be sure the Belarussian health conditions would degrade?

Viola

Anonymous said...

I am glad that the French researchers think consumption of cesium-137 is safe. Send all Fukushima produce to France, France should take a lead to buy all of them form Japan and feed them to French children. Show us what you preach with your action!

Darth 3.11 said...

arevamirpal::laprimavera-san,

What's up with the bland banner? At first I thought it was a close-up of the Fukushima npp fuel rods (coming to an environment near you this month, if anything at all goes w r o n g). Uh, why should we "put up with it"? Has your appeal to let the ads show up made you ditch UltraMan? I don't get it. PLUS, I truly hate ads and they do not influence me at all....so there is no point to this, as far as I can tell.

Meanwhile, back to the real crisis at hand....(but I miss UMan).

Anonymous said...

Darth, for the complaining you do and your hatred for ads, I am sure you have donated to the blog generously. Have you?

Anonymous said...

Darth, it's not really about whether YOU hate the ads. It's about whether the blog can continue without support. You don't write this blog, but the admin does.

JAnonymous said...

Hi there.

I concur with anon above, *BIG RED FLAG* as this is a IRSN paper. Read my comments about IRSN in a previous post to understand where they come from and what their agenda is.

IRSN is managed by various french ministries, so their line of work (and the results they can publish) is well known.

Obviously, a study over years (but who makes a lab study over years ? waste of lab time) would show much more interesting results. Hence the human labs in Pripyat and Koriyama

Also, let me take the opportunity of this comment to offer my most sincere apologies to fellow UK people for the EPR that they are about to buy at a dirty premium at Hinkley Point. Unless the EU decides that the nuke subvention is too blatantly obviously unfair and scrapes the agreement. If you want to know more about the failure that is EPR : http://dailym.ai/HkHkXc

PavewayIV said...

Let me get this straight: Bandazhevsky does autopsies on contaminated Gomel men, women and especially children victims - directly measuring radionuclides in various organs. Observes that cesium does, in fact, accumulate in the heart (quite unexpected). High levels in the heart corresponded to arrhythmias and cardiac-related deaths. Sounds pretty convincing. Get's thrown in prison on bogus charges for reporting this: meets the gold standard for truth.

On the other hand, we have IRSN - research shills for the French nuclear industry - sponsor yet another rat study . Rats hearts are only mildly screwed up by the cesium, but their little rat blood pressure dropped and their circadian rhythm 'disappeared'.

Normally, I would go with the doctors thrown in prison to suppress radioactive damage, but I have to give a hat tip to the French rats: Japanese still alive *are* reporting sleep disturbances and screwed-up metabolism.

No idea if they have abnormal EKGs - I'm sure performing those are banned by the government. ST- and RT- depression are associated with cardiac disease and heart attacks, btw. I hope they don't stress the French rats out, too much.

Anonymous said...

@Paveway 8:54. Cesium doesn't really "accumulate in the heart" - it roughly tends to follow the pattern of potassium concentration, to which it is chemically similar, along with rubidium (which has BTW been used in biological tracer experiments for potassium metabolism). You'll thus get somewhat high levels in muscle tissue in general.
As for Japanese, they *don't* show high levels of Cs:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2183/pjab.89.157
Internal radiocesium contamination of adults and children in Fukushima 7 to 20 months after the Fukushima NPP accident as measured by extensive whole-body-counter surveys
R.S. Hayano et al., Proc. Jpn. Acad. B 89(4), 157--163, 2013
"The Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP accident contaminated the soil of densely-populated regions in Fukushima Prefecture with radioactive cesium, which poses significant risks of internal and external exposure to the residents. If we apply the knowledge of post-Chernobyl accident studies, internal exposures in excess of a few mSv/y would be expected to be frequent in Fukushima. Extensive whole-body-counter surveys (n = 32,811) carried out at the Hirata Central Hospital between October, 2011 and November, 2012, however show that the internal exposure levels of residents are much lower than estimated. In particular, the first sampling-bias-free assessment of the internal exposure of children in the town of Miharu, Fukushima, shows that the 137Cs body burdens of all children (n = 1,383, ages 6–15, covering 95% of children enrolled in town-operated schools) were below the detection limit of 300 Bq/body in the fall of 2012. These results are not conclusive for the prefecture as a whole, but are consistent with results obtained from other municipalities in the prefecture, and with prefectural data."

Anonymous said...

annon 12:09 Nov 8 is right, Cs is like K in our body. It concentrates in muscles. What is the most active and hard working muscle in our body? Surprise, its the heart.

Also while Cs is very similar to K (same charge same period), in chemistry you will prefer to use Cs over K if you are running a reaction in organic solvents. Why? Because, Cs is much bigger than K and thus much more hydrophobic - it does not like water as much as K. Thus the distribution of Cs inside and around the cells will differ from K.

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