Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityThe fact that ionizing radiation acts as a non-specific vascular damaging agent which increases the fragility and "permeability" of blood vessels has been well established in the literature. However, the relationship between dosage and "permeability" has not been definitely established either in the total animal or in the individual tissues.
The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of sub-lethal and supra-lethal doses of ionizing radiation in transvascular exchange. In order to accomplish this, the rate of disappearance of injected radioiodinated human serum albumin from the circulation of non-irradiated hamsters was compared with that of hamsters irradiated at 600r and 1200r irradiation exposures. Further, the rate of disappearance from the plasma as a whole was determined as well as tha rate for liver, spleen, kidney, lung, adrenal and intestine in order to determine if the effects on transvascular exchanges due to irradiation injury were more pronounced in any particular tissue. Determinations were also made of the times required for vascular-extravascular equilibration of injected radio-albumin and the intravascular and extravascular albumin masses in the various tissues of the non-irradiated and irradiated groups in order to correlate the disappearance rates with changes in vascular extravascular albumin mass. [TRUNCATED
