Effect of selenium intake on the prevention of cutaneous epithelial lesions in organ transplant recipients

Abstract

Organ graft recipients have a high rate of pre-malignant and malignant epithelial lesions. Selenium directly influences the number of Langer-hans cells. In several studies selenium has shown its role in preventing various carcinomas, it was worth investigating whether it could prevent skin cancer linked to human papilloma virus (HPV). A multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled, parallel group study in 184 recent organ transplant recipients was undertaken. Patients were treated for 3 years with 200 mug/day selenium (91 patients) or a matching placebo (93 patients), and then monitored for 2 years. Occurrence rates of warts and various keratoses (main criterion) and of skin cancers (secondary criterion) were compared in the two groups, using Kaplan-Meyer analyses. There was no difference between the two groups for the main criterion (odds-ratio 1.09, p = 0.72) or the secondary criterion (odds-ratio 3.08; p = 0.15). When both arms were pooled, phenotype and age were not found to be discriminatory factors, whereas a previous history of an actinic keratosis significantly increased the risk of developing a skin cancer by 17.5%. Safety was good and similar in both groups. Selenium was not shown to prevent the occurrence of skin lesions linked to HPV. The occurrence of skin cancer was higher if there had been a previous actinic keratosis, highlighting the importance of early dermatological follow-up of the transplanted population. This was demonstrated by the high rate of epithelial lesions detected, which was more than twice the rate usually reported in the literature.