Damped-oscillator model of adaptive response and its consequences

Yehoshua Socol, Yair Y. Shaki, Ludwik Dobrzyński

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many experimental, ecological, and epidemiological studies have shown that low doses of ionising radiation may be beneficial to human health by causing an adaptive response, a process called 'hormesis'. The dual effect of radiation has been summarised by the qualitative dual-probability model, which estimates the resulting biological effect of the radiation by taking into account both (a) dose- and time-dependent damage and (b) dose- and timedependent beneficial health effects (adaptive protection). We report here further development of the dual-probability model into a quantitative phenomenological model. Our main objective is to model the time-evolution response to radiation as a time-evolution of a damped oscillator in the critical damping regime. The model predicts that an organism's resistance to radiation stress can be considerably improved by 'radiation training'. If the model is verified by future experiments, it may prove valuable; for example, it could considerably improve the efficacy of radiation therapy by increasing therapeutic doses.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)186-206
Number of pages21
JournalInternational Journal of Low Radiation
Volume11
Issue number3-4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Jerusalem College of Technology Grant No 5969.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Adaptive protection
  • Cancer
  • Hormesis
  • Radiation therapy

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