✍ Scribed by Semra Şardş; İsmet Çok; Orhan Seyfişardaş; Osman İlhan; Ali Esat Karakaya
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Investigation of polymorphic enzyme systems with varying activity is very useful for genetic cancer epidemiologists and clinicians since it considers metabolic steps directly linked to the carcinogenic processes that are involved. N-acetylation appears to be an important step in the metabolic pathways involving several carcinogens. Phenotypic variations in the rate of acetylation are due to different properties of the enzyme N-acetyltransferase. The activity of this enzyme, based on acetylation of sulphadimidine, induces a considerable increase in the number of tumors developing in mice, and a direct correlation between tumor weight and degree of acetylation has been reported (Bulovskaya, 1976;Dilman, 1976). Growth of experimental transplantable tumors involves enhanced acetylating activity.
To test this hypothesis, Bulovskaya et al. (1978) have measured the rate of acetylation in breast cancer patients and have shown that breast cancer cases included more rapidly acetylating individuals than controls. Several investigators confirmed these observations (Cartwright, 1984;Evans, 1986) while others did not (Phillip et al., 1987;Ladero et al., 1987). The question thus remains open whether patients with breast cancer are slow or fast acetylators.
We have determined the acetylation phenotype in a group of breast cancer patients and in healthy females. Twenty-eight patients with advanced breast cancer were evaluated. All were admitted, with full consent, to the Department of Hematology and Oncology, Ankara University, Turkey. Age ranged from 30-65 years. Fijty-one healthy female volunteers between the ages of 26 and 61 years were selected as controls. All subjects were of Turkish ancestry.
Acetylation phenotypes were ascertained using the sulfamethazine test (SMZ) of Evans (1969), before any form of therapy had been started in the cancer patients. Patients and controls received SMZ orally (25 mglkg body weight). Blood serum was assayed 6 hr afer the drug was taken. Acetylating activity was evaluated on the basis of the percentage of serum level of acetylated to total SMZ. Table I shows the distribution of slow and rapid acetylators in the patient and control groups. Breast cancer patients showed a tendency towards a higher rate of acetylation. The incidence of rapid SMZ acetylators in the breast cancer group was
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## Background: N-acetylation polymorphism has been documented as a representative pharmacogenetic trait, and also has been implicated ecogenetically in an individual's susceptibility to cancer. however, there still remains controversy concerning the association between colorectal cancer and n-acety