Radioactivity in Calcified Atherosclerosis

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Abstract
Abdominal aortas, obtained from un-selected postmortems of 16 elderly individuals, were tested for a-activity. The results reveal that radioactivity tends to follow the calcium deposits in aortas. In an elderly female, who showed dense calcification of the abdominal aorta, the a-activity was higher than in bone. The aortas of elderly individuals with negligible atherosclerosis contained only minute amounts of [alpha]-emitters. A relationship has been found between the severity of calcified atherosclerosis and the amount of radioactivity. These observations deserve attention in future studies on atherosclerosis.