Glutathione concentration and distribution in cervical cancers and adjacent normal tissues.

Intracellular glutathione (GSH) has been shown to play an important role in modulating the cellular response to many cytotoxic agents, including radiation and chemotherapeutic drugs. In this study, individual glutathione levels from contiguous blocks of cervical cancer tissue were determined in order to investigate the intratumor GSH distribution and variation, as well as the difference between tumor and its normal counterpart. The GSH content of a squamous cell carcinoma of the cervix was twofold higher than its normal counterpart, but there was no obvious difference in a case with adenoid cystic carcinoma. The tumor margin adjacent to normal tissue has a higher GSH content than the tumor center in a large tumor. Although the intertumor variation in GSH is different in these two tumors, a common coefficient of variation, 26, is observed, which may be used to estimate the range of tumor GSH if it can only be determined by a biopsy.