Photon Factory Activity Report 2017 #35 (2018)

BL-11B, 4A/2016G543

Longitudinal Variation of Ca Content in Medulla of Human Hair from Breast Cancer
Patients
Atsushi ITO1, *, Tsuyoshi ARIYAMA1, Taiki FUKUSHI1, Masaya TORIGATA1,Kunio SHINOHARA1,
Kozue YOKOYAMA2, Risa OSHITANAI2, and Yutaka TOKUDA2
1
School of Engineering, Tokai Univ., Hiratsuka, Kanagawa 259-1292, Japan
2
School of Medicine, Tokai Univ., Isehara, Kanagawa 259-1193, Japannormal female hairs seems to exhibit less variation
although an increasing trend of Ca content is seen withincreasing distance from the hair root. In addition, themeasurements with XRF gave similar results. Thepositions indicating high Ca content observed in cancer
samples should be discussed considering the information
about cancer size and the portion of growing phase incancer tissue (Ki value).
0.1

(a)

3 Results and Discussion
Figure 1 shows Ca contents in medulla from hair root
to tip for breast cancer patients (a) and for normal females(b). Ca content normalized with S content used as anindex of hair thickness was plotted against the distancefrom the hair root. The results of four samples from eachgroup were shown. Samples drawn with bold line haverelatively low Ca content, which are shown with the left
vertical axis, while samples with broken lines have highCa content shown with the right vertical axis. It should be
noted that Ca content in hairs from breast cancer patientshas a trend of large variation depending on the position
from the hair root. On the other hand Ca content in

0.5

0.08

0.4
0.3

Ca/S

0.06

0.04
0.2
0.02

0.1

0005

1015

2025303540

Distance from hair root (cm)0.1(b)

0.6
0.50.08

0.4
0.3

Ca/S

0.06

Ca/S

2 Materials and Methods
X-ray contact microscopy was used for imaging Ca at
the Ca-K edge at BL-11B with a spatial resolution ofabout 0.5 m. Ca mapping of high sensitivity was also
performed by detecting X-ray fluorescence (XRF) upon
X-ray microbeam exposure with a diameter of around 5
m at BL-4A. The hair specimens were kindly supplied
from women suffered from breast cancer based on
informed consent at Tokai University Hospital. The hair
was cut in a thickness of about 20 m, and attached on
SiN membrane as described previously [2].

0.6

Ca/S

1 Introduction
Human hair is known to maintain time-dependent
information about human blood contents from a hair root
to a hair tip, because it grows at an average of 1cm permonth with neutrition through the contact with blood onlyat the root site. Possible application of Ca variation inhuman hair was reported for the forecast of the incidenceof breast cancer [1]. Although many factors are supposed
to affect Ca content in hair such as external oxidative
damage, we have proposed that Ca content in medulla, acentral part of hair, would reflect Ca content in blood [2].
In the previous report, we compared Ca content andoxidative damage in hair samples obtained from breast
cancer patients, and concluded that oxidative damage that
increases with increasing distance from a hair root does
not correlate with Ca content in medulla, in contrast to theapparent correlation with Ca content in cuticle, an outerpart of hair [3]. In the present study, we extended thenumber of Ca measurements and compared Ca content
between breast cancer patients and normal females.

0.04
0.2
0.02

0.1

00051015202530Distance from hair root (cm)Fig. 1. Ca content in medulla of human hair.
(a) breast cancer patients, (b) normal females.
Acknowledgement
This work was partly supported by the Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, Grant-inAid for Scientific Research (C) (16K05021).
References[1] J. Chikawa et al., J. X-ray Sci. Tech., 15, 109 (2007).
[2] A. Ito et al., AIP Conf. Proc., 1696, 020021 (2016).
[3] A. Ito et al., PF Activity Rep 2016, 34, 164 (2017).
* aeito@keyaki.cc.u-tokai.ac.jp