Serum lipid profile of breast cancer patients in kashmir

Abstract

Showkat Ahmad Bhat, Manzoor R Mir, Sabhiya Majid, Ahmad Arif Reshi,Ishraq Husain, Tehseen Hassan, Hilal Ahmad

Malignancy of the breast is one of the commonest causes of death in women aged between 40-45 years. The aim of this study was to carry out a comparative study to investigate the effect of lipid profile, oestradiol (EST) and obesity on the risk of a woman developing breast cancer. In this study, 120 women including 60 breast cancer patients (25 to 80 years) were assessed for lipid profile, EST and Body Mass Index (BMI) and 60 controls with similar age range. There was a significant increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) (p = 0.011), Total Cholesterol (TC) (p<0.001), triglyceride (p = 0.026) and low density lipoprotein (LDLcholesterol) (p = 0.001) of the breast cancer patients compared to the controls. With the exception of EST that decreased, the lipid profile generally (TG) increased with age in both subjects and controls with the subjects having a much higher value than the control taken in the study. There was also a significant positive correlation between BMI and TC (r2 = 0.022; p = 0.002) and also between BMI and LDL-cholesterol (r2 = 0.031; p = 0.0003). Apart from EST and LDL-cholesterol that were increased significantly only in the postmenopausal phase in comparison to the controls, BMI, TC and TG were increased in both pre-menopausal and post menopausal phases with HDL-cholesterol remaining unchanged. This study confirms the association between lipid profile, BMI and increased breast cancer risk.