Why does exposure to radiation cause cancer/leukemia? sometimes even decades later
In: 90
It causes DNA mutations that can eventually lead to cancer.
You have genes that prevent cancer called “tumor suppressor genes” and genes that can cause cell proliferation called “oncogenes”. Damage to tumor suppressor genes and over-activation of oncogenes leads to cancer. Cancer cells have uncontrolled proliferation and can mutate further and invade other parts of the body.
For example, imagine an x-ray photon comes in and blasts the DNA right in the middle of a tumor suppressor gene causing a mutation that makes it no longer functional. You wont get cancer right away because you have many tumor suppressor genes but now you’r down one copy. Now say you smoke a cigarette a few years later and the chemicals in the smoke cross into your blood and find more of those suppressor genes in that cell by chance and mutate it too. Now you have a cell somewhere that no longer has the “brakes” to stop rapid cell growth, it’s not cancer yet but it only needs one of the oncogenes to become overactive and it could become cancerous. Maybe a few years later that cell divides and by chance another mutation makes an oncogene overactive and the cell begins to rapidly divide, it then invades other tissues and gains more mutations, several months later you feel sick and are diagnosed with cancer.
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