radiation from HBO’s dramatic new show, Chernobyl.

It’s gruesome and painful to say the least, and often life-threatening. And while watching,

I couldn’t help but wonder: if Chernobyl had happened today, over 30 years later,

how would we treat people suffering from radiation poisoning?

What people experience when exposed to high doses of radiation is called Acute Radiation

Syndrome, also known as radiation sickness or radiation poisoning.

In other videos, we’ve covered in more detail what happens to your body when you get radiation

sickness, but in brief, it goes like this.

The kind of radiation that we’re talking about is called ionizing radiation, meaning

the particles doing the damage have enough energy that when they react with other atoms,

they can remove electrons from that atom, causing it to become charged or ionized.

As you can imagine, this is quite a problem when those atoms are in your body.

Changing the fundamental nature of an atom in your biological tissue, like making it

charged when it wasn’t before, can seriously mess up parts of your cells so they don’t

function properly, including your DNA.

These newly created ions can also interact with other molecules that naturally exist in

your body to create toxic substances, like hydrogen peroxide, which can also destroy cells.

Cells that replicate faster than others in your body are much more susceptible to radiation

because as they divide more, their DNA is more exposed.

So tissues that regenerate more often, like your bone marrow and your gastrointestinal tract

and your skin, are where you see the most acute effects of radiation poisoning, with

symptoms like nausea, vomiting, skin falling off, etc.

So how do we treat it?

Once you’ve been exposed to a high radiation dose, what can we do?

We start pretty primitively, but those exposed to poisonous doses of radiation, even low

ones, should immediately remove clothes and outerwear that have been exposed to and have

absorbed the radiation, to eliminate contact with that now radioactive material.

Those exposed also need to wash radioactive material off their bodies and out of any wounds,

and this can be done using something called a chelating agent, or a substance that binds

to radioactive compounds so that when you rinse,

they’re picked up off your skin and removed.

Another relatively simple remedy that’s been around for a long time is called Prussian

Blue, an iron cyanide pigment compound that when ingested, binds to radioactive

isotopes and keeps them from being absorbed by your body.

Then it just exits your body as waste.

Potassium Iodide is also a more classic treatment.

It’s a stable salt, and again, binds to radioactive compounds, particularly radioactive

iodine, to keep it from damaging your thyroid—which is incredibly important because your thyroid

is an essential gland that regulates some of your most important bodily processes, like

your metabolic system.

And thyroid damage and cancer were some of the many conditions experienced by those exposed to Chernobyl’s

radiation.

And the other treatments for radiation poisoning that we had back in Chernobyl’s day were

palliative: treating the symptoms and supporting vital functions as your body either recovered

or didn’t.

For example, impaired bone function due to radiation means less blood cells and decreased

immunity, so treatment for that includes blood transfusions and antibiotics to fight off

any potential infection.

But a significant update to this treatment are white blood cell stimulating medications to

make your bone marrow produce more of the cells it's supposed to.

And luckily, we’ve made several developments like this since the Chernobyl days to make

radiation poisoning treatment more effective.

For example, a team in China recently created a new actinide decorporation agent.

That means taking a harmful radioactive compound—an actinide—that’s been deposited in your

bones and organs and removing it.

Decorporation agents like this have actually been around since the 50’s, and potassium

iodide and Prussian blue are technically decorporation agents as well, but many teams around the

world are working on making new ones.

We want them to be more effective, work faster, and be safer to use and this most recent

development has a record high removal rate of uranium isotopes in organs and bones, while

having low toxicity itself.

This promising new technique is just in animal trials right now, but is representative of

a whole community that’s working on new ways to remove radiation from the human body.

The entire family of decorporation agents, old and new, is joined by other new kinds

of drugs, many repurposed from other medical applications—like increasing blood flow and

reducing inflammation for other conditions—and their properties work to protect tissues from

further damage, while decorporation agents can whisk the damaging compounds away.

TP508, for example, was developed for the treatment of severe diabetes symptoms, but

it's shown to be effective in preventing the destruction of intestinal cells in those with

radiation poisoning, while also increasing the rate of cell repair. At the very least, this

buys doctors more time as they treat those exposed to extreme radiation.

And even though we’ve been talking about short-term treatments for acute radiation

poisoning, modern medicine, especially advances in genetics and more personalized treatments,

will hopefully also make a huge difference in the treatment—and perhaps—prevention of the

more long-term effects of radiation exposure, like radiation-induced cancers.

Research like this is incredibly important not only for victims of nuclear disasters,

but also for people every day dealing with side effects of radiation treatments for various

illnesses.

If Chernobyl were to happen today, we would have some new treatments to try, but hopefully

medicine will continue to make strides like this to make complete cure of radiation sickness

a reality.

Do you want to know how radiation exposure affects your body, then take a look at this video here.

And if you want to know more about a particular treatment, let us know down in the comments below.

Make sure to subscribe to Seeker and thanks so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.