Urinary selenium excretion in patients with cervical uterine cancer

In this work, we report on a relationship between urinary selenium and the development of cervical uterine cancer. A simple chemical method was developed to concentrate trace amounts of selenium from relatively large urine samples by use of small activated carbon filters. When these filters are irradiated with thermal neutrons, selenium can be determined either by ^77mSe (t _1/2=17.5 s) or ⁷⁵Se (t _1/2=120 d). In this article, we report the results for 82 urine samples from women with cervical uterine cancer in several stages of development and from healthy controls. These results show a statistically significant increase of selenium excretion in cancer patients as compared to controls. Urinary selenium excretion is highest for patients in the intermediate stages of the disease.