Fatty acid composition of serum and tissue lipids in benign and malignant gynecologic disease

Lipid composition of serum and of tissue was analyzed following the histologic confirmation of benign gynecologic disease and of gynecologic malignancy in the uterine cervix, the uterine corpus, and the ovary. Short-chain fatty acids made up 30 per cent of the fatty acids found in normal tissues while malignant tissue contained only 2 per cent of such fatty acids. On the other hand, a progressive rise in long-chain highly unsaturated fatty acids occurred in malignant tissue as compared to benign gynecologic tumors and normal tissue.