Heliotropism of Cholesterol in Relation to Skin Cancer

Abstract

The cholesterol content of neoplasms has occupied my thoughts for many years. At a conference of the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Montevideo in 1916 (1), I discussed the results of my first experiments, stating that a rat tumor may contain more than twice as much cholesterol as is found in the whole organism of the host. The same results were presented in 1917 before the Latin-American Congress of Microbiology in Buenos Aires (2). Later investigation of animal and human tumors confirmed these results, showing not only a distinct fixation of cholesterol in neoplasms, but greater activity on the part of the organs which produce it (3). Furthermore, it is possible to modify the soil in such a way as to inhibit or prevent the growth of a tumor by keeping animals on a cholesterol-free diet. In order to determine the relationship between these results and the situation obtaining in the human patient, we undertook determinations of the amount of cholesterol in cancer, in fragments of tissue removed from precancerous lesions, and in the normal skin of the same patient. The results are shown in Tables I and II, the amount of cholesterol being given in grams per hundred grams of dried material.