Fig. 1.

Publications trends using the SCOPUS database. ‘Ionising radiation’ and ‘microglia’ yields fewer results (49) than ‘ionising radiation’ and ‘brain’ search terms (2330). The lack of research between 1964 and 1997 is significant, and the striking increase in literature in the last 2 decades may coincide with the emergence of the concept of ‘neuroinflammation’ as a prolific research field within neuroscience. Even fewer results are yielded for ‘low dose ionising radiation’ (328), and fewer yet when ‘microglia’ is included (6), representing the paucity of studies on this topic. The second wave of publications on ‘low dose ionising radiation’ and ‘brain’ starting at the beginning of the 1970s may be as a result of the heightened use of medical radiation technologies and the consequent clinical exposure of patients to low doses.