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Abstract

Cancer patients often undergo radiation therapy as part of their treatment plan, and certain levels of zinc are essential for repairing DNA and maintaining our immune system. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the extent of the effect of this type of treatment on the level of zinc in blood serum, as 106 samples were collected from both healthy individuals and cancer patients to measure zinc levels in blood serum. Atomic absorption spectroscopy was used after properly preparing the sample, and the results showed that the healthy group had an average zinc concentration of (1.316 ± 0.10) × 103 parts per billion (ppb). In contrast, the group of patients not undergoing radiotherapy had a mean zinc concentration of (1.357 ± 0.081) × 103 (ppb), while the P value did not show any statistical difference between the group of untreated patients and healthy individuals. These results indicate that zinc levels in serum samples are not affected by the presence of the disease. However, statistical analysis revealed a significant variation in zinc concentration levels between patients and healthy groups during sessions from 1 to 10 days and from 31 to 40 days (P < 0.05). The other groups did not yield any statistically significant differences (P > 0.05). There was also a statistically significant difference in the mean zinc concentration in the patient group across the different radiotherapy sessions. The results suggest that radiation therapy sessions may affect zinc levels in cancer patients.

Keywords

Atomic absorption Spectrophotometer, Cancer patients, radiotherapy sessions, Serum samples, Zinc

Subject Area

Physics

Article Type

Article

First Page

2307

Last Page

2312

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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