Vitamin A concentrations in lung cancer.

Several authors find that development of lung cancer often is associated with a lower dietary intake of retinol (vitamin A) (1,2), suggesting that this vitamin might even possess anti-carcinogenic properties. However, this correlation is much debated. Lopez et al. (3) found no significant differences between retinol concentrations in serum of cancerous and noncancerous patients; others (4, 5) claim that retinol is significantly lower in the serum of patients with lung cancer. Because these different studies each involved a small number of patients and unspecified (and thus perhaps unreliable) determination techniques, we decided to make a comparative study of this particular correlation in a large number of patients and control samples, using a sensitive, specific, and reliable analytical method. We studied 252 consecutive patients: 140 noncancerous control subjects, 70 lung cancer patients, and 42 patients with cancers other than lung cancer. All were men between 40 and 75 years in age, who were smokers. Retinol in serum was measured by a reversed-phase “high-performance” liquid-chromatographic method (6). The paired Student’s t-test was used for statistical comparison. The results (tabulated below) are not significantly different for control subjects and cancerous patients, regardless of where the cancer was located: Retinol concn In serum, mg/L