Some aspects of body composition in cancer

Changes in body composition, in cancer as in benign disease, simple starvation or overfeeding, show the integrated effect of a period of metabolic imbalance. Therefore, accurate measurements of body composition can help to elucidate the mechanisms that bring about the imbalance. Techniques of measurement that depend for their accuracy on the constancy of some property of the entire fat-free tissues are unlikely to give accurate results in obese or wasted patients. It is more informative, and more accurate, to measure fat, water, protein and mineral separately, and at present this is best done by dilution of labelled water and multi-element in vivo neutron activation analysis. Changes should be determined by sequential measurement wherever possible; otherwise results must be compared with 'normal' values found by measuring healthy subjects, correcting if necessary for differences in age and stature between patients and healthy subjects.