A group of researchers are taking issue with the widely held theory that even low doses of radiation from diagnostic imaging can increase a person's risk of cancer in an opinion piece published in the June issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
The quartet asserted that the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory is based on an inaccurate, 71-year-old hypothesis and leads to unnecessary fear and misdiagnoses. Lead author Jeffry Siegel, PhD, and colleagues also contend that imaging-related radiation does not increase an adult's cancer risk, nor does it adversely affect pediatric patients (JNM, June 2017, Vol. 58:6, pp. 865-868).
The comments follow a January 2017 article in the JNM in which a group led by Siegel, who is president and CEO of Nuclear Physics Enterprises in Marlton, NJ, criticized the LNT theory, which states that all radiation is harmful, regardless of the dose or dose rate.
"The assumption ignores evidence-supported adaptive responses that either repair mutations through enhanced repair enzymes or remove the unrepaired cells by apoptosis [death of cells as part of normal growth] or, most importantly, the immune system," Siegel and colleagues wrote in the June article.
The researchers also cited studies that show "initial radiation-induced damage is generally repaired or eliminated in a matter of hours by the body's adaptive responses," adding that nuclear medicine and CT radiation doses already are low, promoted by the as-low-as-reasonably-achievable (ALARA) principle.
"The obsession over lowering radiation dose is a futile and laborious attempt to minimize what is, in fact, a nonexistent risk," they wrote.
