Modeling Multiple Causes of Carcinogenesis
An array of epidemiological results and databases on test animal indicate that risk of cancer and atherosclerosis can be up- or down-regulated by diet through a range of 200%. Other factors contribute incrementally and include the natural terrestrial environment and various human activities that jointly produce complex exposures to endotoxin-producing microorganisms, ionizing radiations, and chemicals. Ordinary personal habits and simple physical irritants have been demonstrated to affect the immune response and risk of disease. There tends to be poor statistical correlation of long-term risk with single agent exposures incurred throughout working careers. However, Agency recommendations for control of hazardous exposures to humans has been substance-specific instead of contextually realistic even though there is consistent evidence for common mechanisms of toxicological and carcinogenic action. That behavior seems to be best explained by molecular stresses from cellular oxygen metabolism and phagocytosis of antigenic invasion as well as breakdown of normal metabolic compounds associated with homeostatic- and injury-related renewal of cells. There is continually mounting evidence that marrow stroma, comprised largely of monocyte-macrophages and fibroblasts, is important to phagocytic and cytokinetic response, but the complex action of the immune process is difficult to infer from first-principle logic or biomarkers of toxic injury. The many diverse database studies all seem to implicate two important processes, i.e., the univalent reduction of molecular oxygen and breakdown of aginuine, an amino acid, by hydrolysis or digestion of protein which is attendant to normal antigen-antibody action. This behavior indicates that protection guidelines and risk coefficients should be context dependent to include reference considerations of the composite action of parameters that mediate oxygen metabolism. A logic of this type permits the realistic common-scale modeling of multiple causes of carcinogenesis and shifts the risk-assessment logic to considerations of "what dose does?" in contrast to the current process of the substance-specific question of "what dose is?" Whether reactive oxygen is the proximate or contributing cause of disease or simply a better estimate of biologically effective dose, it has enormous advantages for improved risk- and policy-based decisions. Various estimates of immune system modulation will be given based on radiobiology.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Defense Special Weapons Agency
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-96OR22464
- OSTI ID:
- 9348
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/CP-104083; ON: DE00009348
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: American Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting, Aneheim, CA, January 24, 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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