| Research Abstract |
We investigated the correlation of the selenium metabolism and the clinical stage in gastrointestinal cancer patients, and the inhibitory effect of selenium against pancreatic cancer in Syrian golden hamster induced by N'- nitrosobis(2-oxopropyl)amine. In clinical research, we found significantly lower selenium level both in the serum and in the tissue of the patients suffering from cancer comparing to those from the benign patients. The serum selenium level showed lower according to the progression of cancer stage, but the tissue selenium level showed no correlation with cancer stage. In animal research, 4-week-old female Syrian golden hamsters were divided into 2 groups according to the selenium level contained in the drinking water, 0.1ppm and 4.0ppm respectively and fed with the very low selenium purified diet. At 4 weeks after the commencement, some of the animals were begun to besusubcutaneously administered 10mg/kg body weight weekly 10 times, while the others were similarly administered saline alone. 18 weeks after the last injection, the hamsters were killed for histological examination and serum assays of selenium level and glutathione peroxidase activities. The number of the pancreatic cancer per a hamster was significantly inhibited in the high selenium group, in which the carcinogenests was also relatively inhibited. The selenium level and glutathione peroxidase activities of the serum revealed significantly higher in the high selenium group. These suggest the low selenium state could be a high risk factor for gastrointestinal cancer, and that the high selenium level is a preventive factor from cancer development, where glutathione peroxidase acts a role.
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