Low-dose irradiation of non-malignant diseases: Did we throw the baby out with the bathwater?

The irradiation of non-malignant diseases, essentially for anti-inflammatory purpose, have been largely proposed and performed worldwide until the 1970–80s. At that time, the better assessment of the radio-induced malignancies, essentially in children and young patients, as well as the efficacy of the new anti-inflammatory drugs (steroids and non-steroids), led to the almost disappearance of those techniques, at least in France. In contrast, our German colleagues are still going on treating about 50,000 patients per year for non-malignant (more or less severe) diseases. After a short historical overview, the present article suggests that we were possibly going too far in the rejection of those low-dose irradiations for benign lesions. The recent emergence of new preclinical data, the better understanding of the risk of radio-induced secondary tumours (almost nil in the elderly), and the severity of some situations, such as the cytokine storm of the COVID-19, should probably lead us to reconsider those low – and sometimes very low (less than 1 Gy) – irradiations for well-selected indications in the elderly.