Zawartość GABA i aktywność GAD w tkankach gruczołu piersiowego u kobiet leczonych operacyjnie z powodu raka piersi

Abstract

Author(s): Andrzej Kurylcio, Maria Mazurkiewicz, Wojciech P Polkowski

Introduction: The aim of the study was to assess GABA content and GAD activity in macroscopically unchanged tissue as well as in breast cancer tissue. We assessed correlations between GABA and GAD and primary tumor size (T), presence or absence of metastases to axillary lymph nodes and patients’ age.

Material and methods: The study included 54 patients treated surgically for breast cancer. The clinical characterization of examined population was performed. The following factors were assessed: age, tumor size, type of microscopic diagnosis, regional lymph nodes state. GABA content and GAD activity were measured in tissue material obtained from both tumor and macroscopically unchanged breast tissue. To assess GABA concentration and GAD activity spectrofluorometrical analysis was performed according to Lowe et al. and Sutton et al. modification.

Results: The age of examined women ranged between 37 and 85 years. The most common histological type was ductal carcinoma (carcinoma ductale), which constituted 77,8% of all examined tumors. The presence of metastases to axillary lymph nodes was confirmed with histopathological examination in 17 cases (31%). The obtained results were statistically analyzed. We observed, that GABA content and GAD activity were significantly higher in tumor tissue (p<0,005) than in macroscopically unchanged breast tissue. Moreover, highly statistically significant positive correlation between GABA concentration and GAD activity was found in both cancer tissue (r=0,58) and macroscopically unchanged breast tissue (r=0,5).

Conclusions: No statistically significant correlation between GABA concentration and GAD activity in cancer tissue and breast tumor size (T) was found, however, a tendency for decrease of GABA and GAD values with increase in breast tumor size was observed. Interestingly, we found positive, statistically significant, correlation between GABA and GAD in T2 and T3+T4 tumors in both cancer tissue (p<0,05) and macroscopically unchanged tissue (p<0,05). Nevertheless, no correlation was found in small tumors (T1). In addition to that, we found significantly higher GABA concentration (p<0,05) in tumor tissue in the group of patients with metastases to lymph nodes in comparison to patients without metastases in lymph nodes.

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