ArticleScientific reports2016
Fitness costs of increased cataract frequency and cumulative radiation dose in natural mammalian populations from Chernobyl.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Radioactive contamination and climate warming affect physiological performance of Chornobyl barn swallows.PloS one · 2025Article
- Ionizing radiation has negligible effects on the age, telomere length and corticosterone levels of Chornobyl tree frogs.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Population transcriptogenomics highlights impaired metabolism and small population sizes in tree frogs living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.BMC biology · 2023Article
- The dogs of Chernobyl: Demographic insights into populations inhabiting the nuclear exclusion zone.Science advances · 2023Article
- Current ionising radiation doses in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone do not directly impact on soil biological activity.PloS one · 2022Article
- The effects of ionizing radiation on domestic dogs: a review of the atomic bomb testing era.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Review
- Expansion of rDNA and pericentromere satellite repeats in the genomes of bank volesEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Individual quality and phenology mediate the effect of radioactive contamination on body temperature in Chernobyl barn swallows.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Anther-smut fungi from more contaminated sites in Chernobyl show lower infection ability and lower viability following experimental irradiation.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Long non-coding RNA ANRIL alleviates HAging · 2020Article
- Effects of chronic low-dose radiation on cataract prevalence and characterization in wild boar (Sus scrofa) from Fukushima, Japan.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Fibroblasts from bank voles inhabiting Chernobyl have increased resistance against oxidative and DNA stresses.BMC cell biology · 2018Article
- Analysis of heteroplasmy in bank voles inhabiting the Chernobyl exclusion zone: A commentary on Baker et al. (2017) "Elevated mitochondrial genome variation after 50 generations of radiation exposure in a wild rodent."Evolutionary applications · 2018Article
- Gilbert W. Beebe Symposium on 30 Years after the Chernobyl Accident: Current and Future Studies on Radiation Health Effects.Radiation research · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A cataract is a clouding of the lens that reduces light transmission to the retina, and it decreases the visual acuity of the bearer. The prevalence of cataracts in natural populations of mammals, and their potential ecological significance, is poorly known. Cataracts have been reported to arise from high levels of oxidative stress and a major cause of oxidative stress is ionizing radiation. We investigated whether elevated frequencies of cataracts are found in eyes of bank voles Myodes glareolus collected from natural populations in areas with varying levels of background radiation in Chernobyl. We found high frequencies of cataracts in voles collected from different areas in Chernobyl. The frequency of cataracts was positively correlated with age, and in females also with the accumulated radiation dose. Furthermore, the number of offspring in female voles was negatively correlated with cataract severity. The results suggest that cataracts primarily develop as a function of ionizing background radiation, most likely as a plastic response to high levels of oxidative stress. It is therefore possible that the elevated levels of background radiation in Chernobyl affect the ecology and fitness of local mammals both directly through, for instance, reduced fertility and indirectly, through increased cataractogenesis.
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