Contents
Argonne National Laboratory Janus mouse studies, tissues, and data are held within the Northwestern University Radiobiology Archives.
The data collected in the Janus study is not fully annotated. It is important that you understand the experimental setup and the recording methods before you draw statistical conclusions from the data.
We recommend the following steps:
Read the experimental group observations of pathologies by categories as defined in the Appendixes of ANL technical report ANL-95/3, Studies of Acute and Chronic Radiation Injury at the Biological and Medical Research Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 1970-1992: The JANUS Program Survival and Pathology Data: Documentation
- Remember that the collection of histopathological data (microcodes) was not consistent across tissues and studies.
- Remember that necroscopies were not collected for all animals
- If you plan to aggregate the results of multiple studies remember that the control treatment conditions between studies changed in recorded and unrecorded ways. For example the average control lifespan varies between studies, often for unknown reasons.
Data for Download
The database terms and pathologies key describe the terms used in the data set. The data tables are organized by animal id. Demographics contains experimental parameters, demographics, and lifespan for each mouse.
The pathological data is available from several files, all organized by the same number and order of animal as demographics (the tables can be pasted side by side and will line up).
Macros contains gross necroscopy observations for all mice which had a necroscopy performed (noted in demographics).
Micros contains histological data for each mouse, but beware that the histological data was not sampled consistently.
Grouped Macros and Grouped Micros contain observations of pathologies by categories as defined in the Appendixes of Grahn et al 1995. These categories are useful for deriving statistical significance from pathologies that were rarely observed, but belong to a category of more commonly observed pathologies.
*note if you are using an older version of excel the files might not load completely, don’t worry the pathologies are ordered by their frequency so you will get the most common ones.
Archivists with a historical interest in the studies may download a copy of the database as we received it from the NRA archival effort in 2000. It is stored as a Microsoft Access database. ( mdb )