In Korea, colon cancer is one of the most fasting growing cancers in the last decade. Although a colonoscopy is served as a preventive tool by detecting a colon cancer precursor of adenoma, unremoved adenoma increases the likelihood of later developing colon cancer. Thus, understanding adenoma will give the important information of progress in colon cancer. However, there are few studies for colorectal adenoma along with colon cancer in Korea. The objective of this study was to investigate the serum antioxidant mineral levels in adenoma and colon cancer compared to healthy controls. We examined the selenium, copper and zinc by using atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Selenium was significantly lower in both adenoma and cancer groups, compared to the controls (p＜0.05). In contrast, copper was significantly higher in both adenoma and colon cancer patient groups, compared to the controls (p＜ 0.0001) while there was no difference in zinc among the different stages of colon cancer. Our finding indicated that non-cancerous benign stage of adenoma and malignant colon cancer had comparable serum selenium and copper levels, which significantly different from healthy controls. These findings suggest that certain mineral levels can be used as early stage indicator for colon cancer progression. (Cancer Prev Res 15, 225-230, 2010)

Keywords: Selenium, Copper, Zinc, Adenoma, Colon cancer