NMR spectroscopy based study of physiological perturbations during recurrence of symptoms in radiation sickness

Introduction: The radiation sickness occurs after whole body or significant partial body irradiation of greater than 1 Gy radiation dose. It is a sequence of phased symptoms. Early phase with no specific clinical responses starts with in few hours to few days of radiation exposure followed by a transient recovery phase. However, clinical symptoms associated with major organ system injured reappear after 2-3 weeks of radiation exposure. This manifest illness phase is characterised by intense immunosuppression and is most difficult to manage. Survivability of radiation exposed person depends on this phase and a regular monitoring in illness phase is essential for optimal clinical management. In earlier studies, radiation induced changes in liver and kidney have been observed after 3 weeks of radiation exposure using NMR based metabonomics. However, for development of minimal invasive or non invasive techniques for identification of radiation related changes of metabolic markers during illness phase, NMR spectroscopy based study on urine has been proposed.