Sabbatical Researcher Studied Ca-DTPA Therapy at the USTUR Research Center
Sabbatical researcher, Dr. Bastian Breustedt from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, conducted a six-month sabbatical with the USTUR starting on February 21, 2011. Dr. Breustedt, director of the Institute for Nuclear Waste Disposal’s (INE) Internal Dosimetry Group and In-Vivo Monitoring Laboratory, was the first KIT Sabbatical Researcher to work at the USTUR Research Center. He collaborated with Dr. Tolmachev and Ms. McCord to analyze and apply USTUR data from Registrant tissue donors who were treated extensively with Ca-DTPA chelation therapy. The goal was to test, and develop further, the EURADOS/WG-7 “chelation model” – focusing, for the first time, on human 241Am data from USTUR donor 0846, who inhaled 241AmO2. In July of 2012, Dr. Tolmachev presented progress on this research at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society in Sacramento, CA.
Biokinetic modeling of chelation therapy for 241Am – USTUR Case 0846
B. Breustedt (KIT), S. McCord (USTUR), S. Tolmachev (USTUR)
Chelation therapy is a method to avert doses after incorporation of actinides. The perturbation of the biological processes cannot be described by the existing biokinetic models. Currently no generic model to describe the perturbation by chelation therapy exists. USTUR Case 0846 was a whole body donor who accidentally inhaled ~67 kBq 241Am, which was first reported in 1967. After confirmation of the intake, he was extensively chelated over 380 wk. Overall 313.5 g DTPA were given in 342 i.v. injections; 57 of them were 0.5 g doses, and 285 were 1 g doses. Virtually all urine was collected during the therapy. The gentleman, who died more than 40 years after the intake, was a whole body donor to the U.S. Transuranium and Uranium Registries (USTUR). Data available at USTUR, including original dosimetry and medical reports, have been analyzed to generate a dataset suitable for thorough biokinetic modeling of the chelation therapy. Based on post-mortem radiochemical tissue analyses, the total skeleton and liver were estimated to contain 30 kBq and 290 Bq of 241Am, respectively. The dataset will be completed when the remaining tissues have also been radiochemically analyzed. These radiochemistry results will provide an insight on the effects of DTPA-chelation therapy and support the biokinetic modeling. The methods used to generate the dataset, and the first steps in the assessment of this case and the development of a biokinetic model of decorporation therapy will be presented.