The Effect of Selenium Serum Levels on Oral Mucositis Frequency and Severity in Patients with Head and Neck Radiation

Radiotherapy as an important treatment modality in head and neck cancer diminishes reactive oxygen system which causes damages to the normal cell/ tissue function and cell cycle regulation. Selenium involve in both antioxidant and antiinflammatory systems. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether there is a difference between selenium levels before and after radiotherapy and the effects of serum selenium levels on radiotherapy oral mucositis (OM) patients undergoing radiation for head and neck cancer. This prospective study includes 42 head and neck cancer patients treated by external beam radiotherapy at the Cancer Institution of Imam Khomeini Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Plasma selenium concentrations were determined before and after radiotherapy. The grade of oral mucositis was evaluated weekly from the first day until resolving OM by the WHO oral toxicity scale. The mean patient age was 54.7±13.2 years. For most of the patients, the histopathological diagnosis of cancer was squamous cell carcinoma (N=28 (66.7%)). There was no significant difference in serum Selenium levels before and after radiotherapy (85.4±30.6 before radiation and 90.3±33.3 after radiation, P >0.05). Moreover, there was no significant difference between levels of Se after radiotherapy in patients who developed severe oral mucositis and who did not. In our study, we couldn’t find any significant difference in the levels of Selenium before and after radiotherapy and also there was no association between Selenium levels and oral mucositis developing.