Formation of potential radiation risk groups to render timely targeted medical care: lessons of Chernobyl

The paper discusses technology for establishing potential cancer risk groups, based on methods of molecular and radiation epidemiology. Assay of gene mutations at the T-cell receptor (TCR) locus as the method of molecular epidemiology was used for measuring the frequency of TCR-mutations in 320 nuclear workers of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE). The method of radiation epidemiology was applied to the estimation of attributable risk fraction (ARF) for solid cancers in these groups. The main estimates of radiation risk after the Chernobyl accident are in close agreement with the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Publication, 103 models published in 2007. In nuclear workers of the IPPE with ARF epsilon 10, the increased level of TCR-mutations occurs more often (risk ratio9.7; 95 CI: 2.9; 32.1).