Radiation-induced Anomalies: Report of a Study Conducted in Chernobyl*

At the 34th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Teratology Society held in July 1994, the first author was asked by President Hiroshi HARA to report on the results of the international joint study on congenital anomalies that we were conducting in the former Soviet Union. It was only a short time ago that the study was begun and long-term observation needs to be made hereafter, but we made an interim report on the results obtained so far. In this report we describe (1) the results of a joint study made with Director Gennady Lazjuk of the Institute for Hereditary Diseases in Minsk, Republic of Belarus, mainly with regard to congenital anomalies that have increased after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, (2) the results obtained in a study made with Dr. Anatoly Vacilez, Chief, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Gomel District Hospital in Belarus, a heavily contaminated area in Belarus, and (3) the congenital anomalies that can be considered to have occurred as a result of the approximately 570 nuclear tests made over a period of 40 years from 1949 to 1989 in Semipalatinsk, Republic of Kazkh.     

Decreased L-selectin expression in CD34-positive cells from patients with chronic myelocytic leukaemia

Abnormal adhesive interaction between bone marrow stroma and progenitors, one of the causes of unregulated proliferation in chronic myelocytic leukaemia (CML), may be caused by some alterations in adhesion molecules on CML progenitors. We investigated the expression of adhesion molecules (CD44, VLA-5, VLA-4, LFA-1, ICAM-1, L-selectin and c-kit) on bone marrow CD34⁺⁺ cells from 16 CML patients by three-colour flow cytometry. The mean percentage of cells expressing L-selectin in the CD34⁺⁺CD38^{+  ∼  ++} fraction from untreated CML patients was significantly lower, and that in the CD34⁺⁺CD38⁻ fraction tended to be lower than that from normal controls. Among 11 CML patients treated with interferon-α (IFN-α), the mean percentage of the cells expressing L-selectin in the CD34⁺⁺CD38⁻ fraction from three patients with a low percentage of Ph¹(+) cells in bone marrow was significantly higher than that from five patients with a high percentage of Ph¹(+) cells. In addition, L-selectin expression rate was inversely correlated to the percentage of Ph¹(+) cells. There was no significant difference between the untreated patients and normal controls with regard to the expression rates of the other adhesion molecules in each CD34⁺⁺ fraction except LFA-1. These data suggest that decreased L-selectin expression in CML CD34⁺⁺ cells reflects one of the features of malignant CML progenitors.