Radiation a Risk Factor for Brain Tumors in Young People

In a recent study conducted by researchers at Loyola University, radiation was found to be a risk factor for developing meningiomas in people under age 30. During the study, published in the journal Neuroscience Discovery, researchers analyzed records of 35 patients who were diagnosed with meningiomas before the age of 30. Five had been exposed to ionizing radiation earlier in their lives, two patients received radiation for leukemia at ages five and six, one received radiation at age three for a medulloblastoma brain tumor and one received radiation for an earlier skull base tumor. Another patient had been exposed at age nine to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear power-plant disaster in Ukraine and went on to develop a meningioma 20 years later. In those patients, the average latency period for the tumors was 23.5 years. “The results of this preliminary study have prompted us to look closely at radiation’s effects on the brain,” the study’s lead author and neurosurgeon at Loyola. The research team will be conducting a follow-up study on patients of all ages who have been treated at Loyola for meningiomas, and will analyze the genetics and biology of tumor samples in order to discover how they differ from samples of tumors not linked to radiation. To read more about this study, click here.