[Changes in plasma phospholipid composition and lipid antioxidant activity of breast tumor patients without and following radiation therapy].

Phospholipid composition and antioxidative activity of lipids were studied in blood plasma of patients with tumoral and nonmalignant pathologies of mammary glands. In patients with mammary gland tumors relative content of various phospholipids was distinctly altered as compared with healthy persons. Specific alterations in content of the phospholipids were noted at various steps of the pathological process: an increase in content of sphingomyelin and complete absence of lysophosphatidyl choline in fibroadenoma; the same phenomenon, simultaneously with an increase in content of phosphatidyl ethanolamine and a decrease in phosphatidyl choline concentration, was observed in fibrocystic mastopathy. At the initial steps of malignization lysophosphatidyl choline was not found but the sphingomyelin contents were of opposite direction as compared with fibrocystic mastopathy. The subsequent development of neoplasm was characterized by an increase in relative content of sphingomyelin/in patients with tumors up to 4 cm in diameter (as well as of phosphatidyl ethanolamine and by a decrease in lysophosphatidyl choline content) tumors exceeding 5 cm/ as compared with the normal state. The antioxidative activity of blood plasma lipids was significantly decreased in patients with non-malignant tumors and with malignant neoplasms exceeding 6 cm in diameter. An X-ray treatment altered the lipid fraction antioxidative activity and relative content of erythrocyte phospholipids towards the states typical for early steps of malignization.