Investigation of the Medical Effects of Functional Food Materials for Radioprotection

Abstract

Radiation and radioactive materials are generally used in various medical fields for diagnostic imaging or blood inactivation for blood transfusion. Furthermore, they are useful in non-destructive tests, growth inhibition of agricultural products, and industrial sterilization. Despite their useful applications in specific fields, their influence on human health cannot be neglected. Although radiotherapy is one of the most typical therapeutic methods for cancer treatment, side effects generally follow each treatment in many clinical cases. Therefore, mitigation methods are required to alleviate the side effects of radiotherapy for achieving optimum therapeutic effects of cancer treatment. To this end, many studies have been performed to reduce the side effects of radiations and to protect human bodies from the radiations. There are several types of medicines known as typical radiation protective agents such as amifostine (WR-2721), which exhibits radioprotective effect by radical elimination or low oxygen action, and it can improve the production of hematopoietic cell growth factors such as G-CSF and GM-CSF. Other medicines include Prussian blue, a chelating agent, and stable iodine, which promote the excretion of radioactive materials induced by internal contamination. However, no radioprotective medicine for clinical usage has been approved in Japan so far. Therefore, the development of a new material for radioprotective medicine is in urgent need. In the development of radiation-protective agents, not only drug development processes but also the search for functional food materials has been performed. However, very little knowledge about the medical effects and toxicity of the food material with radiological protection function has been accumulated. In this review, medical data about radioprotective functional foods reported from 1990 to 2012 has been verified and medical verification about the validity of the data and the data-analysis method has been performed. A structured abstract of about 88 archived research reports extracted from PubMed is created. The analytical result suggested that most of the reports about radioprotective functional food material were at rudimentary medicine level. Furthermore, standardization of medical evidence data has not been performed to date; and it is difficult to compare the effect of each type of material objectively. Therefore, the development of standardized models consisting of safety assessment and further data verification models is needed. However, since some materials have been followed until the clinical trial stage, the application of radiation-protective agents that utilize functional natural food materials is expected.