Abstract
In India, cancer of the breast is the most common cancer among women in many regions and has overtaken cervix cancer. Organochlorine pesticides are one of the risk factors of this disease because of their potential estrogenic activity, immunosuppressive and tumor promoting properties. Organochlorine pesticides including, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and Hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) have been shown to enhance oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation in various tissues. Redox status of breast tumors and surrounding tumor free breast tissues in association with organochlorine pesticides levels was investigated to find any possible association between them. Ten newly diagnosed breast cancer patients, mean age of (50.75±8.16) years from King George Medical University, Lucknow, were chosen for the study to determine antioxidant enzyme activities namely superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione (GSH) and lipid peroxidation (MDA) was assayed. In case of blood MDA and SOD activity were found significantly higher in malignant group however, GSH level was higher in control group (p<0.05 each). In case of tissue, tumor levels of MDA, CAT and SOD activity were detected higher in comparison to adjacent disease free tissue. On the other hand, GSH level was significantly higher found in disease free tissue than those of tumor (p<0.05 each). In our opinion, enhanced antioxidant capacity in form of enzyme activity is an adaptive measure to counteract organochlorine pesticides mediated free radical generation, as evident by higher MDA level in tumor as well as in blood. It shows that organochlorine pesticides mediated oxidative stress is, at least partly, associated with breast cancer.
