Therapeutic nature of selenium

Could higher levels of dietary selenium truly help to prevent cancer? In a number of different tumor models, animals that consumed diets with elevated levels of selenium experienced repressed carcinogenesis (El-Bayoumy 1991; Ip and Hayes 1989). Many of these animal studies involved the inorganic form of selenium, sodium selenite; whereas we know that the majority of selenium comprised in the human diet is organic in form.

Scientists Ip and Ganther gracefully demonstrated the presence of a relationship between the form of selenium and its contribution to chemoprevention (1992a; 1992b). Chemoprevention relies on vitamins, drugs and other elements to reduce the risk or delay the development or recurrence of cancer. Some nutritional supplements on the market contain forms of selenium with chemopreventive traits.

Selenium's amino acids, selenomethionine and Methylselenocysteine (MSC), are stable, non-oxidizing and nonmutagenic. While we know that selenium restrains the growth of mammalian cells, we do not know precisely how this occurs. Some researchers suggest the answer may have something to do with apoptosis - programmed cell death - or breakage of DNA strands, among other possibilities.