Radiation nephritis. Chronic changes following moderate doses of radiation.

Experimental radiation nephritis in the rat is the result of progressive injury involving glomeruli and tubules. Vascular damage plays litter or no role in the initial stages although arterial necrosis and thrombosis develop in the late stages. The radiation nephritis is essentially a degenerative process and the inflammatory reaction, if any, appears to be secondary to necrosis. Within the range employed in this and in previous experiments (1,500 to 10,000 rads), the nature of changes is the same regardless of the dose; large doses of radiation merely accelerate and aggravate the process. During the "latent'' phase there are progressive ultrastructural alterations which eventually become evident by light microscopy.