Changes in body composition during chemotherapy can negatively influence the prognosis of cancer patients. In order to assess changes in body composition in patients undergoing chemotherapy, a case-control study was conducted in the cobalt therapy departments of the Douala General Hospital. The overall objective of this study was to determine the impact of chemotherapy and stage of disease on changes in body composition in women with breast or cervical cancer followed at the oncology unit of Douala General Hospital. Muscle mass, body fat and body water percentages were measured by the bioimpedancemetry method and blood samples were collected for the measurement of albumin and creatinine concentrations. The results were analysed using SPSS version 16 for Windows (SPSS, IBM, Chicago, IL, USA). The mean age of the patients was 44.62 ± 11.23 years for breast cancer (BC) patients, 50.37 ± 10.78 years for cervical cancer (CC) patients and 46.11 ± 10.43 years for controls. Muscle mass, body fat and body water decreased significantly in cases compared to controls (respectively p = 0.0028, p = 0.004, p = 0.004). According to the stage of the disease when the two clinical groups were taken individually muscle mass decrease significantly between stage 1 to stage 2 in patients with BC (p = 0.001), but not in patient with CC (p = 0.84). Body fat and body water percentages decrease not significantly between stage 1 to stage 2 in the both cancer. Metabolically, creatinine concentrations were significantly elevated in both groups of patients compared with controls (p < 0.001), and albumin concentrations were significantly low (p < 0.001). In terms of disease stage, creatinine concentrations increased but not significantly between stage 1 and stage 2 in breast cancer patients (p = 0.08) and decreased non-significantly in cervical cancer patients (p = 0. 95). Albumin concentrations decreased significantly in cervical cancer patients (p = 0.01) between stage 1 and stage 2 but did not decrease significantly in breast cancer patients (p = 0.55). In conclusion, chemotherapy considerably altered the physical and metabolic body composition of breast and cervical cancer patients included in our study.
