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Glutathione, an antioxidant plays an important role in phase-II detoxification of carcinogens. The levels of reduced glutathione are maintained by glutathione-depleting as well as replenishing enzymes such as glutathione-s-transferase (GST) and glutathione reductase (GR), respectively. Pre and post treatment changes in GST and GR activities in head and neck cancer patients were analysed. Serum GST and GR were analysed from untreated head and neck cancer patients (PT) (n=146), controls with habit of tobacco (VHT) (n=25) as well as without (no) habit of tobacco (NHT) (n=25) and patients with oral precancerous conditions (OPC) (n=50). The cancer patients were followed-up after initiation of anticancer therapy. Follow-up blood samples were collected. Serum GST and GR activities were estimated by highly sensitive and specific spectrophotometric methods. Untreated cancer patients showed elevated mean serum GST and GR activities as compared to NHT. Patients with OPC had declined mean GST activity as compared to WHT and untreated cancer patients. Paired t-test revealed that complete responders (CR) showed significantly elevated GST levels and declined GR activities (p0.001) as compared to those in PT. No correlation was found between stage of the disease and GST, GR activity. Paired t-test showed significant decreased in GR activity in nonresponders (NR) treated with radiotherapy (p=0.01). The study suggested that analysis of glutathione and glutathione-depleting enzymes can be helpful for treatment monitoring of head and neck cancer patients.

The identification and application of quantifiable tumor markers as adjuncts to clinical care is a story of both success and failure. The present study compared serum levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) with total sialic acid/total protein (TSA/TP) ratio and phosphohexose isomerase (PHI) in 192 untreated lung cancer patients as well as 80 age and sex matched controls (44 non-smokers and 36 smokers). CEA values were significantly raised (p0.001) in smokers as compared to the non-smokers; whereas, TSA/TP and PHI values were comparable between the two groups of the controls. All the biomarkers were significantly elevated (p0.001) in untreated lung cancer patients as compared to the controls. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed higher sensitivities of TSA/TP and PHI as compared to CEA at different specificity levels between 60% and 95%. Mean values of CEA, TSA/TP and PHI were higher in non-responders compared to the responders. The results indicate that TSA/TP and PHI are superior tumor markers than CEA for lung cancer patients.

C-band heteromorphism was studied in 106 females, including 71 patients with breast cancer or ovarian cancer. Size heteromorphism and localization variants (inversions) were scored separately. Compared to 22.86% of controls, 70.42% of the cancer patients were heteromorphic for the size of C-band. The localization variants were observed in only 8.57% controls, whereas 42.25% of cancer patients carried such variants. Taking both the criteria together, compared to 31.43% controls, 80.28% cancer patients were C-band heteromorphic. The present study supports the reported association between presence of C-band heteromorphism and occurrence of a malignant disease.

Possible heteromorphism of Y chromosome regions was studied in 50 leukemia patients and 50 healthy controls. The mean length of the Y chromosome was insignificantly higher in the patients as compared to the controls. No difference was observed in the size of the euchromatic region; however, the size of the heterochromatic region was significantly larger in leukemia patients as compared to the controls.

Sister chromatid exchange (SCE) frequencies were studied in normal and mutagen-treated lymphocyte cultures from patients with ovarian carcinoma and controls. The mean SCE value per cell in normal cultures from the patients was 7.84 which was significantly higher than 6.41 SCEs per cell observed in the controls (p less than 0.01). Similar SCE values obtained for mutagen (mitomycin C, MMC) treated cultures were somewhat lower for patients as compared to the controls, however, the difference was not significant. Cellular kinetics, expressed as average generation time (AGT), was suppressed in lymphocyte cultures from ovarian carcinoma patients as compared to the controls (p much less than 0.05). It was concluded that although baseline SCE rates in lymphocytes of patients with ovarian carcinoma were higher as compared to the controls, they have very limited application as a marker malignancy.