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Abstract #78093 Published in IGR 19-4
Occupational radiation exposure and glaucoma and macular degeneration in the US radiologic technologists
Little MP; Kitahara CM; Cahoon EK; Bernier MO; Velazquez-Kronen R; Doody MM; Borrego D; Miller JS; Alexander BH; Simon SL; Preston DL; Meyer C; Linet MS; Hamada NScientific reports 2018; 8: 10481
There are well-documented associations of glaucoma with high-dose radiation exposure, but only a single study suggesting risk of glaucoma, and less conclusively macular degeneration, associated with moderate-dose exposure. We assessed risk of glaucoma and macular degeneration associated with occupational eye-lens radiation dose, using participants from the US Radiologic Technologists Study, followed from the date of surveys in 1994-1998, 2003-2005 to the earliest of diagnosis of glaucoma or macular degeneration, cancer other than non-melanoma skin cancer, or date of last survey (2012-2014). We excluded those with baseline disease or previous radiotherapy history. Cox proportional hazards models with age as timescale were used. There were 1631 cases of newly self-reported doctor-diagnosed cases of glaucoma and 1331 of macular degeneration among 69,568 and 69,969 eligible subjects, respectively. Estimated mean cumulative eye-lens absorbed dose from occupational radiation exposures was 0.058 Gy. The excess relative risk/Gy for glaucoma was -0.57 (95% CI -1.46, 0.60, p = 0.304) and for macular degeneration was 0.32 (95% CI -0.32, 1.27, p = 0.381), suggesting that there is no appreciable risk for either endpoint associated with low-dose and low dose-rate radiation exposure. Since this is the first examination of glaucoma and macular degeneration associated with low-dose radiation exposure, this result needs to be replicated in other low-dose studies.
Radiation Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892-9778, USA. mark.little@nih.gov.
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