Radiation therapy is commonly used to treat cancer, but head or neck treatment usually leads to salivary gland damage. Understanding the mechanisms behind the deleterious effects of salivary gland irradiation is necessary to improve therapies and patients’ quality of life. However, the dosage and regimen of radiation required to reproduce similar damages in mouse models still need to be characterized. A study in Disease Models & Mechanisms shows that exposure of a mouse model to a single dose of 10 Gy of gamma irradiation mimics the results observed in radiation therapy patients. Comparing three different radiation regimens with either a single dose (10 or 15 Gy) or fractionated radiation of 5 Gy showed that all produced similar results, but the single dose of 10 Gy was more appropriate to model salivary gland damage in future studies.

Original reference: Johnson, A.L. et al. Dis. Model Mech. 17, dmm050733 (2024)

放射疗法通常用于治疗癌症，但头部或颈部治疗通常会导致唾液腺损伤。了解唾液腺照射有害影响背后的机制对于改善治疗和患者的生活质量是必要的。然而，在小鼠模型中重现类似损伤所需的辐射剂量和方案仍然需要表征。在疾病模型与机制中的一项研究表明，小鼠模型暴露于单剂量的10 Gy伽马射线照射，与放射治疗患者观察到的结果相似。将三种不同的放疗方案与单剂量（10 或 15 Gy）或 5 Gy 分次放疗进行比较，表明都产生了相似的结果，但 10 Gy 的单剂量更适合在未来的研究中模拟唾液腺损伤。

原始参考资料：Johnson， A.L. 等人 Dis.模型 Mech.17， DMM050733 （2024）