Effect of Irradiation on the Excretion of Radiosodium from the Gills of Goldfish, Carassius auratus L.

Two distinctly separate mechanisms, the bone marrow and intestinal syndromes, have been described by various workers (1-5) to be the causes of death in mammals after whole-body irradiation. Curran et al. (6) have shown that active sodium transport from lumen to plasma ceases after irradiation and that it plays a major role in the mechanism of acute intestinal radiation death. Jackson and Entenman (7) feel that the loss of sodium via the bile is an important factor in the cause of death after X-ray irradiation. Taketa (8) suggests that microorganisms may play a prominent role and has shown that treatment with antibiotic after irradiation increases the survival time. This effect was significantly enhanced when NaCl was infused with the antibiotic. This increases the importance of the role played by sodium electrolyte in radiation death. The importance of sodium excretion after irradiation has also been discussed by Bowers and Scott (9) and by Caster and Armstrong (10). These experiments, however, were performed on mammals. Literature dealing with the lower vertebrates is scanty. Interesting observations of van der Schueren and Bonte on Rana temporaria show that ultraviolet irradiation causes the disturbance of the ion transport across the skin (11). As far as the authors are aware, no attempt has been made to locate the causes of irradiation death in fish. Experiments to study the intestinal and hematopoietic tissue syndromes are in progress in this laboratory and are expected to yield interesting results. It has been reported that in fish there are several distinct ranges of X-ray doses over which causes leading to death may be different. Furthermore, the dose-survival time relationship found in fish could be compared with that of mammals (12). Tachi (13) has suggested that the increased excretion of sodium after irradiation with Co60 y-rays could be one of the causes of acute radiation death in fish. In the present paper an attempt has been made to report the sodium reaction in goldfish, Carassius auratus L., irradiated with 8000 r of X-rays, and also the ex-