IMPLICATION OF CARBONIC ANHYDRASE AND SUPEROXID DISMUTASE

IMPLICATION OF CARBONIC ANHYDRASE AND SUPEROXID DISMUTASE

Carbonic anhydrase (CA) is an enzyme that has a major role in acid-base balance in the organism; superoxide dismutase (SOD) plays a deffenssive role of the organism against the toxicity of superoxide radical. Our studies showed that erythrocyte SOD is low in digestive cancer patients (I.Puscas, Cancer Letters,143:95-98,1999) and erythrocyte CA II activity is low i 242c23c n all digestive cancer patients (I.Puscas,Cancer Investigation,USA,1999,in press).

AIM: we studied the relationship between SOD and erythrocyte CA II activity and tumor stage.

METHOD: we selected 196 patients who underwent surgery for cancer disease in different stage and location. From the location was grouped as follows: 41-esophageal, 59 - gastric, 38 colorectal, 31-hepatic, 27-pancreatic. Regarding tumor stage the patients were grouped in 4 categories: I -T₁N_oM_o (N=16); II -T₂N_oM_o-T₃N_oM_o (N=53); III - T₄N_1-3M_o (N=98); IV-T₄N_1-3M₁ (N=39). In all patients we determined CA II and erythrocyte SOD activity as compared to a group of 62 healthy volunteers. CA and SOD activity has been accomplished with the stopped-flow method using a HI-TECH SF 510MX apparatus (England).

RESULTS

DISCUSSIONS: The results of this study show that erythrocyte CA II and SOD activity is low in all types of cancer studied here, decrease that is significant even in the fisrt stage as compared to normal values. CA II and SOD activity decreases in parallel with the stage of tumor process, the lowerest being in the 4th stage when this activity is 3 fold lower than in controls. Our results show a direct correlation between CA and SOD activity and tumor stage according to TNM classification.