Lack of sunlight exposure influence on primary glioblastoma survival

Abstract

Background: The prognosis of primary glioblastoma (GBM) is poor. Approximately 2/3 of primary brain tumor diagnoses are GBM, of which 95% are primary lesions. In this study, we aimed to evaluate whether more sunlight exposure has an effect on survival of patients with primary GBM. Materials and Methods: A total of 111 patients with primary GBM were enrolled from Kayseri in inner Anatolia which has a cold climate (n: 40) and Mersin in Mediterranean region with a warm climate and more sunlight exposure (n: 71). The patients with primary GBM were divided into two groups as Kayseri and Mersin and compared for progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).Results: The PFS values were 7.0 and 4.7 months for Kayseri and Mersin groups, respectively (p=0.10) and the repsective OS values were 13.3 and 9.4 months (p=0.13). We did not found any significant difference regarding age, sex, comorbidity, smoking, surgery, resurgery, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy and palliative chemotherapy between the groups. Conclusions: We found that more sunlight exposure had no impact on prognosis of patients with primary GBM, adding inconsistency to the literature about the relationship between sunlight and GBM.