Visfatin concentrations in patients with endometrial cancer

Abstract

Objective: Visfatin is one of the most recent proteins shown to be highly expressed in adipose tissue. The purpose of this study was to determine visfatin levels in patients with endometrial cancer (EC). Methods: A total of 90 patients (46 EC patients and 44 healthy controls) were included in the study. Fasting venous blood samples were collected from all patients. Serum visfatin levels were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The correlation between serum visfatin levels and clinicopathologic variables were determined. Results: Serum visfatin levels were found to be higher in patients with EC (p < 0.001). Visfatin concentrations were positively correlated with age (p = 0.002, r = 0.323), body mass index (BMI) (p = 0.001, r = 0.354), fasting insulin (p = 0.002, r = 0.326), total cholesterol (TC) (p = 0.006, r = 0.285), triglyceride (TG) (p < 0.001, r = 0.364) levels and homeostasis model-resistance index (HOMA-IR) (p = 0.007, r = 0.281) of patients. By using classification and regression trees (C&RT) method, we found that visfatin predicted patients with EC 100% and controls 81.8%. Conclusion: Visfatin was the most important risk factor for occurrence of EC other than, age, BMI, Diabetes Mellitus and other biochemical factors like HDL, LDL, TG, TC. Clearly, there are largely unknown aspects of visfatin pathophysiology in EC and require further study.