ABSTRACT
Objectives To explore the dose-response relationship between low-dose ionizing radiation and thyroid hormone levels of radiation medical workers and provide theoretical basis for occupational health protection to this population. Methods Using a prospective cohort study design, we collected health examination reports on employees that worked on jobs with occupational exposure to radiation at hospital with individually dose monitoring data for 1 237 workers. The effective cumulative radiation dose was divided into three groups: 0～2.586 mSv, 2.586～3.757 mSv, 3.758～31.272 mSv by the interquartile range. The low-dose group was used as a reference to compare the changes in thyroid hormones of medical workers in different cumulative radiation dose groups. The generalized linear models and restricted cubic spline model were used to examine the association and dose-response relationship between the cumulative effective dose and changing thyroid hormones. Results There were statistically significant differences in changing thyroxine (T4) and Free triiodothyronine (FT3) levels among three different dose groups of 1237 subjects (P < 0.05). The results of generalized linear models analysis revealed that 2.586～3.757 mSv was a significant risk factors of changing T4, with β of 3.514 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 0.900～6.128) after adjusting for gender, age, working duration, occupation, medical level and smoking, while the association with changing FT3 was not observed (P > 0.05). The restrictive cubic spline (RCS) model analysis indicated a non-linear dose-response correlation between cumulative radiation dose with changing T4 (P = 0.023). Conclusion Long-term exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation could induce the thyroid damage among medical occupational population. And there is a dose-response relationship between cumulative radiation dose and changing thyroxine.