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Review
. 2023 Dec 10;11(12):1011.
doi: 10.3390/toxics11121011.

Radiation-Induced Intestinal Injury: Injury Mechanism and Potential Treatment Strategies

Qianying Lu  1   2 , Yangfan Liang  1   2 , Sijia Tian  1   2 , Jie Jin  1   2 , Yanmei Zhao  1   2 , Haojun Fan  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Radiation-Induced Intestinal Injury: Injury Mechanism and Potential Treatment Strategies

Qianying Lu et al. Toxics. .

Abstract

Radiation-induced intestinal injury (RIII) is one of the most common intestinal complications caused by radiotherapy for pelvic and abdominal tumors and it seriously affects the quality of life of patients. However, the treatment of acute RIII is essentially symptomatic and nutritional support treatment and an ideal means of prevention and treatment is lacking. Researchers have conducted studies at the cellular and animal levels and found that some chemical or biological agents have good therapeutic effects on RIII and may be used as potential candidates for clinical treatment. This article reviews the injury mechanism and potential treatment strategies based on cellular and animal experiments to provide new ideas for the diagnosis and treatment of RIII in clinical settings.

Keywords: injury mechanism; intestinal injury; radiation; treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Healthy and irradiated gut. Left: Healthy gut. The gut consists of gut microbiota, the mucous layer, intestinal epithelial cells, immune cells, and vascular endothelial cells. Right: irradiated gut. After irradiation, gut microbiota dysbiosis, mucosal layer thinning, intestinal epithelial barrier breakdown, immune cell activation, and vascular endothelium destruction occurred.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Potential treatment strategy of radiation-induced intestinal injury. Ionizing radiation causes intestinal damage. Various strategies, including known clinical agents, traditional Chinese medicine, natural products and their derivatives, microbiome-based therapeutics, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), exosomes, nanoparticles, and anti-ferroptosis drugs, have been demonstrated to ameliorate radiation-induced intestinal injury through a variety of mechanisms in preclinical and clinical trials.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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