The Influence of Gender- and Age-related Differences in the Radiosensitivity of Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells Detected in Steady-state Human Peripheral Blood

To investigate the importance of gender and aging on the individual radiosensitivity of lineage-committed myeloid hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) detected in mononuclear cells (MNCs) of steady-state human peripheral blood (PB), the clonogenic survival of HPCs, including colony-forming unit-granulocyte macrophage; burst-forming unit-erythroid; colony-forming unit-granulocyte-erythroid-macrophage-megakaryocyte cells derived from MNCs exposed to 0.5 Gy and 2 Gy X-irradiation were estimated. MNCs were prepared from the buffy-coats of 59 healthy individual blood donors. The results showed that large individual differences exist in the number of HSPCs, as well as in the surviving fraction of cells. Furthermore, the number of progenitor cells strongly correlated with their surviving fraction, suggesting that the radiosensitivity of hematopoietic progenitor cells decreases with the number of cells in the 10
⁵
cells population. A statistically significant negative correlation was observed between the surviving fraction observed at a dose of 0.5 Gy and the age of an individual, however, none of these correlations were observed after 2 Gy irradiation. No statistically significant difference was observed in individual radiosensitivity between males and females at either radiation dose. The present results indicated a correlation between the individual responsiveness of HSPCs to ionizing irradiation, especially to low dose irradiation, and aging.