Long-term low-dose ionizing radiation induced chromosome-aberration-specific metabolic phenotype changes in radiation workers

Long-term low-dose ionizing radiation (LLIR) widely exists in human life and has been confirmed to have potential pathogenic effects on cancer and cardiovascular diseases. However, it is technically and ethically unfeasible to explore LLIR-induced phenotypic changes in the human cohort, leading to slow progress in revealing the pathogenesis of LLIR. In this work, we recruited 32 radiation workers and 18 healthy non-radiation workers from the same city with the same eating habits for radiation damage evaluation and metabolomics profiling. It was found that clear metabolic phenotypic differences existed between LLIR and non-LLIR exposed participants. Moreover, LLIR exposed workers can be further divided into two types of metabolic phenotypes, corresponding to high and low damage types respectively. 3-hydroxypropanoate and glycolaldehyde were identified as sensitive indicators to radiation damage, which specific response to the chromosomal aberration of workers and may be potential monitoring markers for LLIR protection. Taurine metabolism-related pathways were identified as the main differential metabolic pathway under LLIR inducing, which had been confirmed to have a response to acute or chronic radiation exposure. We expect our study can be helpful to LLIR damage monitoring and symptomatic intervention in the future. [Display omitted] •There are distinct metabolic phenotypic differences between radiation workers and health subjects.•Radiation workers with low or high radiation damage shown differential metabolic phenotype.•3-Hydroxypropanoate and glycolaldehyde were identified with specific response to chromosomal aberration.•Taurine metabolism related pathways were the main differential metabolic pathway induced under LLIR exposure.