Primary Tumours and few Vitamins

Abstract

The requirements and / or the availability of various nutritional factors for the living cell(s) can be quite variable under both physiological and pathological situations. Vitamins are established components of the spectrum of necessary' constituents of food for the living tissues and many of them have proved a protective role in cancer etiology.Design and aims ot study: 1 his is a prospective study to investigate the levels of few vitamins in sera, saliva, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and tumour tissues in the context of primary brain tumours (PBT), both benign and malignant, among a group of Iraqi patients.Setting: The Teaching Hospital at Kadhimiyah (THK) and Neurosurgical Hospital (Nil) in Baghdad.Patients and methods : This study had been conducted between November 2000 and October 2001 at both THK and Ni l in Baghdad. Out of the 107 patients suffering form !5BT with an age range 2-75 years (mean 35, the SD ± 19), 56 were males (52.3%), and 51 were females (47.6%). The most affected age group was 31-40 years (17.75%), 89% of the patients were under the age of 60 years (table 1).There were 77 gliomas (both benign and malignant) and 32 meningiomas (benign).A group of 50 patients with congenital hydrocephalus were involved in the study for CSF sampling, forty age- and sex-matched normal subjects were used as controls in serum and saliva measurements. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used in the study.Results: All 3 vitamins, A, C, and E, have shown lower values in malignant tumours patients (in serum, saliva, CSF, and tumour tissues) compared to those with benign tumours and controls in the biological fluids and tissues that were assayed with statistical significance (p<0.1).Conclusions and recommendations: These changes are quite significant, the findings should be considered in further research to determine both the specificity and sensitivity of low vitamins levels in the possible aetiological association with PBT.