Medicine: Radiation Repair

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Ever since the "Xray martyrs" of the early 1900s showed that radiation could set off damage or destruction of tissues that might go on for years, medical researchers have been trying to find a way to arrest or reverse the process. To do so is particularly important in cancer patients, whose normal tissues may be damaged by X rays passing through them to reach a cancer. For many disappointing years the researchers had little luck.

Last week three doctors on the staff of Manhattan's Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases reported the first substantial breakthrough on the radiation-damage front. Noting that patients with overactive thyroids seemed to suffer less radiation injury, they tried a synthetic thyroid hormone product, triiodothyronine. Of 26 patients who got the "T3" in an ointment within two to four weeks after damaging radiation, 22 showed a good to excellent response; in two it was only fair, and two had to give up because of allergic reactions. All 26 reported immediate relief of pain.

More remarkable were 21 patients with radiation damage to the skin and breakdown of surrounding tissues which had been going on for three months to 30 years. Fifteen of these showed "good or excellent healing of previously unhealed areas."