Selenium and Skin Wounds in Organ Transplant Patients

Selenium supplementation may have no effect on the prevention of skin lesions associated with organ transplants, a new study reports.

Researchers in Europe explained that organ graft recipients have a high rate of pre-cancerous and cancerous epithelial lesions (skin wounds). Selenium directly influences the number of Langer-hans cells. Selenium is a trace mineral found in soil, water and some foods. It is an essential element in several metabolic pathways.

In several studies selenium has shown to help prevent various cancers. Researchers investigated whether it could prevent skin cancer linked to human papilloma virus (HPV).

A multi-center, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel group study in 184 recent organ transplant recipients was undertaken. Patients were treated for three years with 200 μg/day selenium (91 patients) or a matching placebo (93 patients), and then monitored for two 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 or the secondary criterion. 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 percent. Safety was good and similar in both groups.

Researchers concluded that 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.