机构：[a]Department of Orthopaedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou 215004, China[b]Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Compared with high and medium dose irradiation, low-dose irradiation (LDI) revealed different yet healing promotion effects, such as hormesis and adaptive response. A recent milestone work by Zhou demonstrated that LDI at 1 Gy promoted callus formation and mineralization in a rat model, yet without being able to address the underlying mechanism. It is well known that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a key cytokine that regulates angiogenesis, especially important found in the process of fracture healing to interplay with other molecules. Furthermore, recent studies revealed that tissue repair might be enhanced by LDI through up-regulation of the level of VEGF. In view of this general phenomenon, we propose the following hypothesis that low-dose X-ray irradiation at <= 1 Gy promotes fracture healing through up-regulation of VEGF. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
基金：
Sponsored by the Grant of National Natural Science Foundation
of China (No. 30872637).
