Table 4.

Clinical Studies of Glutathione Levels in Gynecological Cancers

Study	Pts a	Tumor Levelsb	γGTc	Cntrld	Ratioe (T/C)	Clinical Response
Ovarian
(Abou Ghalia, 2000)	13	11.6 ± 2.4 mM/g-protein	Y	B	2.1*
(Bailey 1998)	8	225–325f ng/mg-tissue	Y			Levels ↓ with BSO
(Britten, Green and Warenius 1992)	16	1.9 ± 0.1 nmol/mg-protein	N	H	0.35	Levels ↑ with therapy
		1.11 ± 0.08 nmol/106 cells			4.1
(Cheng et al. 1997)	20	0.2 – 52.8 μg/mg-protein	Y			Levels ↑ in non-responders after therapy
(Djuric et al. 1990)	37	379 ± 67 nmol/ml-cytosol	Y	P	1.7	Levels ↓ after therapy
(Ghazal-Aswad et al. 1996)	39	3758 – 8351 nmol/g-dry wt	Y			No correlation pretreatment levels and response
(Hengstler et al. 2001)	189		Y			Some correlation pretreatment levels and response
(Joncourt et al. 1998)	39	16.8 Stage I–II nmol/mg-protein	Y	P	>1*	No correlation pretreatment levels and response
		35.3 Stage III
		49.2 Stage IV
(Kigawa et al. 1998a)	32	2.1 – 53.8 μg/mg-protein	Y			No correlation pretreatment levels and response
(Kigawa et al. 1998b)	26	0.1 – 52.8 μg/mg-protein	Y			Levels ↑in non-responders
(O’Dwyer et al. 1996)	4	64.0 ± 89.5f nmol/mg-protein	Y			Levels ↓ with BSO
(Sprem et al. 2001)	15	126.3 ± 12.8* nmol/mg-protein	N	H	2.6*
(Tanner et al. 1997)	139	4.4 Stage I–II μg/mg-protein 6.0 Stage III–IV*	Y			↑pretreatment levels correlate with ↓survival
Cervical
(Ahmed et al. 1999)	27	All 6.72 ± 2.68 μg/mg-protein	Y	H	0.50*
		Stage I 9.12 ± 2.1
		Stage II 8.58 ± 2.27
		Stage III 4.85 ± 1.12
		Stage IV 4.1 ± 0.85
(Balasubramaniyan, Subramanian and Govindaswamy 1994)	238	64.72 ± 9.71 Stg I μmol/mg-protein	Y	H	1.0
		49.41 ± 11.40 Stage II			0.77*
		43.65 ± 10.14 Stage III			0.69*
		32.73 ± 7.26 Stage IV			0.51*
(Chang, Chang and Hsueh 1993)	2	38.1±10.1 nmol/mg-prot Case 1	Y	P	2.0*
		39.0 ± 9.0 Case 2			1.0
(Guichard et al. 1990)	18	25.0 nmol/mg-protein	N	P	~1
(Hedley et al. 2005)	58		Y			No correlation pretreatment levels and response
(Jadhav et al. 1998)	45	1.6–5.9 μmol/mg-protein	Y	H		Responders show greater↓ than non-responders
(Osmak et al. 1997)g	30	110.1 ± 46.4 nmol/mg-protein	N	P	0.87
(Vukovic, Nicklee and Hedley 2000)	10	2.86 ± 0.15 mM	Y	P	~2

^aNumber of patients with cancer in the study

^bConcentration of glutathione or thiols in tissue. Numbers in italics indicates reports of non-protein sulfhydryls rather than glutathione.

^cDenotes whether degradation by γ-glutamyltranspeptidase was prevented (Y) or not (N) by sample processing methods.

^dDisease free tissue from healthy controls (H); peritumoral tissue (P) or benign lesion (B).

^eRatio of tumor glutathione to control tissue levels. Gray shading indicates statistically significant T/C<1

^fTumor levels from chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancer patients.

^gTumor and normal tissue from corpus uteri.

^*Asterisk indicates statistically significant differences in glutathione levels.