Change of Age Distribution of Childhood and Adolescent Thyroid Cancer after the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Compared with the Chernobyl Cases

Review Data

™      Significance of the Study: This study analyses the published data on the health effects of the Chernobyl accident to assess whether there was one age pattern common in Chernobyl to be used as a criterion of radiation-induced thyroid cancer for the Fukushima nuclear accident. Age distribution of thyroid cancer cases in Fukushima by age at exposure is found to shift to younger age, from 14.9 to 8.3 years in 9 years after the accident. Because there is no common age pattern in Chernobyl, age pattern should not be used as a simple criterion of radiation-induced thyroid cancer. The findings of the study call for the inclusion of cancer cases during the follow-up period in Fukushima Health Management Survey (FHMS) data to study the health effects of long-term low-dose radiation exposure.

 

™      Fit with Journal: The manuscript is highly suited for the journal Clinical Oncology and Research.

 

™      The survey carried out is quite convincing and the observations are appropriately examined and clarified in the Discussion and Conclusions.

 

™      The manuscript is mostly well-written except a few minor errors (already corrected in the galley proof), which are listed below –

 

§  In the 2^nd sentence of 3^rd paragraph of “Incidence of thyroid cancer of age groups at diagnosis after the Chernobyl accident”, the word “constitute” should be replaced with “constitutes”.

§  The first sentence of the 4^th paragraph of Discussion and Conclusions should be reframed as, “FHMS reports did not represent the current status of thyroid cancer

patients in Fukushima accurately” and in the 5^th sentence of 5^th paragraph, “compare carefully the age” should be replaced with “carefully compare the age”.

§  In the 2^nd sentence of 1^st paragraph of Discussion and Conclusions, “1^st”, “2^nd” and “3^rd” should be replaced with “first”, “second” and “third”, each followed by a comma.

§  Commas and articles, e.g., “the” and “a” were missing in several places throughout the text for e.g., “a” before “younger age” in the 6^th sentence of 5^th paragraph and “the” before “percentage” in the 7^th sentence of 4^th paragraph of Discussion and Conclusions.

Author Info

Toshiko Kato

Corresponding Author

Toshiko Kato
Independent Researcher, Nara, Japan

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Thu 23, Jul 2020
Accepted: Wed 05, Aug 2020
Published: Wed 19, Aug 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Toshiko Kato. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.COR.2020.08.20