Renata Wietecha-Posłuszny,1 Justyna Dobrowolska-Iwanek,1 Paweł Kościelniak1,2 and Paweł Zagrodzki3,4
1 Faculty of Chemistry, Jagiellonian University, 30-060 Krakow, Poland
2 Institute of Forensic Research, 31-033 Krakow, Poland
3 Collegium Medicum, Jagiellonian University, 30-688 Krakow, Poland
4 Institute of Nuclear Physics, 31-342 Krakow, Poland
* Corresponding author: E-mail: wietecha@chemia.uj.edu.pl
Abstract
A simple and versatile procedure has been developed for the determination of
selenium in biological samples for clinical
purposes. The procedure consists of microwave sample digestion and the
determination of selenium using atomic
fluorescence spectrometry with a hydride generation system (HG-AFS). The method
allows the determination of selenium
in a range of 0.5–100.0 μg L–1 with a detection limit not higher than 0.2 μg L–1
and with good repeatability not exceeding
1%. It was applied for determination of selenium in women’s plasma samples (n =
90) with a suspicion of a thyroid
cancer and the control group of women (n = 87). Most of the obtained results
were in the range 30.0–60.0 μg L–1
and either did not match the physiological level of selenium in human plasma or
indicate moderate selenium deficiency.
In the further examinations the thyroid tissues taken from 30 patients were
analyzed. In most of the cases the selenium
concentration was found to be lower (0.14–1.67 μg g–1 wet weight) than its
physiological level in a healthy tissue.
On this basis the hypothesis has been drawn that selenium can be considered as
an additional marker of the thyroid cancer
disease.
Keywords: Selenium; thyroid cancer; atomic fluorescence spectrometry