TRACE-ELEMENTS AND ESOPHAGEAL-CARCINOMA

During the past few decades, along with increasing average life expect ancy resulting from success in controlling many formerly infectious di seases and epidemics, cancer is still one of the major problems of the world population. Massive efforts are now being made through mass scr eening for early detection of cancer to unravel the etiological factor s in areas with high prevalence rate of the disease. Inspite of extens ive progress made in the field of cancer research, little has been ach ieved to change the gloomy picture of this dreaded disease. Therefore many investigations are needed to unearth the basic carcinogenic facto rs that provide the normal tissues to transform into cancer. Epidemiol ogical data show a wide variation in the geographical distribution of human cancers and suggest an important contribution of the local envir onment in influencing the incidence of the disease [Doll 1978). Severa l studies in the recent past have implicated dietary habits and life s tyle in increasing the risk of certain cancers in different parts of t he world [Day and Munoz 1982, Siddiqi and Preussmann 1989, Yang 1980]. It is now believed that a majority of human cancers are of environmen tal origin [Doll 1977, Higginson and Muir 1979] and thus in principle can be prevented to a considerable extent provided the specific risk f actors are identified and proper intervention measures are introduced. Among the cancers which are considered to be etiologically linked to the human environment, gastrointestinal tract cancers present the most unusual epidemiology [Tuyans et al. 1985]. The prevalence rate of gas trointentinal tract malignancies is very high in Kashmir and Punjab. T he Registry of Sher-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar, shows that thirty percent of patients with malignancies have esophage al carcinoma.