Association of Cadmium but not Arsenic Levels in Lung Cancer Tumor Tissue with Smoking, Histopathological Type and Stage

Background: To evaluate association of lung cancer with arsenic and cadmium levels measured in tumortissue. Materials and
Methods: Ninety-five patients with lung cancer tumor tissue obtained surgically wereincluded in this study. Arsenic and cadmium levels were measured and levels of metals were compared amongtypes of lung cancer and with reference to patient data.
Results: The histopathologic diagnoses of the 95 caseswere SCC, 49, adenocarcinoma, 28, large cell, 11 and SCLC, 1. Mean tumor arsenic and cadmium levels were149.3±129.1μg/kg and 276.3±219.3μg/kg, respectively. Cadmium levels were significantly associated with smoking(p=0.02), histopathologic type (p=0.005), and TNM staging (r=0.325; p=0.001), although arsenic was not relatedto any parameter (p>0.05). There was no relation between metal levels and mortality (p>0.05).
Conclusions:We found a significant association between tumor cadmium levels of patients with lung cancer and smoking,histopathologic type and staging, although there was no relation with arsenic levels.