The effect of selenium on patients withpancreatic cancer: A narrative review

Background: Selenium is an antioxidant mineral. It is mainlyfound in seafood, animal liver, kidneys, egg products, nuts, andother foods. Selenium has been suggested to have many modesof action, including reducing oxidative DNA damage and geneticmutation. Worldwide, pancreatic cancer (PC) causes morethan a quarter of a million deaths annually, and pancreatic canceris the eighth most common cause of cancer-related death.Selenium combination shows protective potential for pancreaticcancer. According to World Cancer Statistics ۲۰۱۸, pancreaticcancer is a highly lethal malignancy. In the present review, weaimed to overview the effects of selenium on pancreatic cancer.Materials and Methods: This review article was performedin articles published at PubMed, Science Direct, and GoogleScholar, until April ۲۰۲۳. The keywords were selenium, pancreatic,and cancer. By searching these databases; ۱۰ articleswere selected under the inclusion criteria. All articles were chosenfrom English and Persian articles.Discussion: An important mediator of the inflammatory processis the protein cyclooxygenase ۲ (COX-۲), which is overexpressedin PC. Another major pathway that is critical for inflammatoryresponses, cell proliferation, and resistance to apoptosisis the nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) pathway. The NF-κB pathwayis responsible for drug resistance in PC. Aspirin, as a wellknownnonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that hasanticancer effects on PC, its mechanism against PC is partiallydependent on COX inhibition as well as COX-independentmechanism. Through extensive structure-activity relationshipstudies on Se-NSAID compounds, two Se-Aspirin compoundsnamed ASD-۴۳ and ASD-۴۹ were recently identified, which were designed by incorporating selenium (Se) into the salicylicacid structure and they kill cancer cells. Studies in Panc-۱ cellsshowed that both ASD-۴۳ and ASD-۴۹ prevent IκB-alpha degradation,which prevents NF-κB from entering the nucleus, inthe presence of tumor necrosis factor (TNF). After treatmentwith ASD-۴۳ and ASD-۴۹, NF-κB regulated proteins such asSurvivin and Bcl-xL expression were decreased. Furthermore,a dose-dependent induction of apoptosis was detected in thesecells by caspase-۳ activation and PARP cleavage.Conclusion: According to the results obtained from researchand studies, the lower the level of serum selenium and glutathioneperoxidase, which is mediated by selenium, the strongerthe probability of pancreatic cancer. Selenium stimulatesapoptosis in cancer cells, especially in the pancreas, by inhibitingthe COX and NF-kB pathways. However, more and deeperstudies have.

کلیدواژه ها:

selenium ، pancreatic ، cancer ، antioxidant