IL-18 has been shown to play important roles in response to total body irradiation. However, homogenous total body irradiation is not a realistic model to reflect the radiation exposure in a real nuclear event. To further study the roles of IL-18 in a real nuclear scenario, we developed a mouse partial body irradiation with 5% bone marrow sparing (PBI/BM5) model to mimic the inhomogeneous radiation exposure. We established the dose response curves of PBI/BM5 using different radiation doses ranging from 12 to 16 Gy. Using the PBI/BM5 model, we showed that IL-18 knockout mice were significantly more radiation resistant than the wild-type mice at 14.73 Gy. We further studied the hematopoietic changes using a complete blood count, bone marrow colony-forming assays, and serum cytokine assays on the mice exposed to PBI/BM5 with IL-18BP treatment and wild-type/IL-18 knockout mice. In conclusion, our data suggest that IL-18 plays important roles in mouse survival in a realistic nuclear exposure model, potentially through the IL-18/IFNγ pathway.
