Frequent flyers may be at risk of brain damage

FREQUENT flyers and people undergoing high-tech scans may be at greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease from radiation, according to research.

Increasing exposure to ionising radiation may be putting people at more risk of developing the neurodegenerative condition by damaging the brain.

Experiments found mice exposed to radiation suffered changes to the hippocampus, which controls memory, even though the doses were a thousand times smaller than “a single CT scan”.

There has been a sharp rise in the use of CT, also known as CAT, scans in the UK. The number on children, for instance, doubled in a decade to 100,000 a year in 2012.

They provide doctors with a much clearer picture of what is happening inside the body than conventional X-rays. But the machines also deliver a much higher dose of ionising radiation.

Air crew and frequent flyers may also be in danger because ionising radiation comes from outer space. A very small amount reaches Earth, but there is much more at flight altitudes.

Dr Stefan Kempf, of the University of Southern Denmark, said: “When a patient gets a head scan, the doses varies between 20 and 100 mGy and lasts for around one minute.

“When a person flies, he or she gets exposure to ionising radiation coming from space but the rates are by far smaller than a CT scan.

“When you compare these figures you will find we exposed the mice to a more than 1,000 times smaller cumulative dose than what a patient gets from a single CT scan in the same time interval.