CINCINNATI, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Pilots with long-term flying experience may be at risk of DNA damage from cosmic ionizing radiation, U.S. researchers suggest.
Lee C. Yong of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati and colleagues compared the rate of chromosomal -- DNA -- abnormalities in blood samples taken from 83 airline pilots and 50 university faculty members from the same U.S. city, matched for age and smoking habits.
Seventy percent of the pilots had served in the military and had completed more personal air travel than the university staff -- exposing them to more ionizing radiation.
The researchers looking for the number of times pairs of chromosomes had changed places -- translocations -- expressed as a score per 100 cell equivalents.
The average frequency of chromosome translocation was higher among the pilots than the faculty staff at 0.39 compared with 0.32/100 cell equivalents -- but after adjusting for age and other influential factors, there was no difference.
However, when the analysis focused on how long pilots had been flying, differences emerged. The chromosome translocation frequency of those who had flown the most was more than twice that of those who had flown the least -- biologically significant -- after taking age into account.
The finding was published in the British Medical Journal ahead of print in the journal Environmental Medicine.
