Adiponectin and Breast Cancer Risk

Abstract

Adiponectin, an adipocyte-secreted hormone, is closely and inversely associated with insulin resistance and was recently found to be inversely and independently associated with endometrial cancer. Because insulin resistance in the setting of obesity has also been associated with the development of breast cancer, we have hypothesized that decreased adiponectin levels might underlie the association between breast cancer and obesity/insulin resistance. We evaluated the association of adiponectin with the occurrence of breast cancer in a case-control study comprising 174 women with newly diagnosed, histologically confirmed breast cancer and 167 controls. We found an inverse, fairly strong, and statistically significant association of serum adiponectin with breast cancer (odds ratio, 0.84; 95% confidence interval, 0.71-0.99). Importantly, despite a fairly robust inverse association of adiponectin with breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women (odds ratio, 0.82; 95% confidence interval, 0.67-1.00), no such significant association between adiponectin and breast cancer was found among premenopausal women. The observed associations were independent of possible effects of major components of the IGF system, leptin, body mass index, sociodemographic variables, and known risk factors for breast cancer. Future studies are needed to prove causality and provide further insights into both the mechanisms underlying the actions of this hormone and its potential role in breast cancer.

Relationship between a wide range of alcohol consumptions, components of the insulin-like growth factor system and adiponectin

“…IGFBP-1 was directly related with ovarian (Dal Maso et al, 2004a) and, possibly, endometrial cancer (Augustin et al, 2004), whereas an inverse association emerged with colorectal cancer (Kaaks et al, 2000). An inverse association with endometrial (Petridou et al, 2003;Dal Maso et al, 2004b) and breast cancer (Mantzoros et al, 2004) risk emerged for plasma adiponectin.…”

Adiponectin in relation to childhood myeloblastic leukaemia

“…Blinded adiponectin measurements were performed by a radioimmunoassay procedure with a sensitivity of 2 ng ml À1 , and intra-assay coefficient of variation of o10% as previously described (Petridou et al, 2003;Dal Maso et al, 2004;Mantzoros et al, 2004b). Average preservation time was similar for cases and controls, and adiponectin levels do not systematically change with storage time.…”

“…This hormone has also been inversely associated with both adult forms of cancer that have been epidemiologically investigated, namely breast cancer (Miyoshi et al, 2003;Mantzoros et al, 2004b) and endometrial cancer (Petridou et al, 2003;Dal Maso et al, 2004). In a recent in vitro study Yokota et al have investigated the functions of adiponectin in haematopoiesis and found that adiponectin predominantly inhibits proliferation of myeloid cell lines, and induces apoptosis in myelomonocytic leukaemia lines, but did not suppress proliferation of erythroid or lymphoid cell lines.…”

Effects of adiponectin on breast cancer cell growth and signaling

“…Acrp30 is found at high concentrations (2-20 mg ml À1 ) in human serum (Arita et al, 1999;Bondanelli et al, 2001;Miyoshi et al, 2003;Mantzoros et al, 2004;Chen et al, 2006;Korner et al, 2007;Takahata et al, 2007). There are several different forms of Acrp30 in plasma that bind with varying affinity to the two different Acrp30 receptors, AdipoR1, and AdipoR2 (Yamauchi et al, 2003a).…”

“…With respect to breast cancer, lower serum Acrp30 levels have been reported for postmenopausal women with breast cancer (Bondanelli et al, 2001;Miyoshi et al, 2003;Mantzoros et al, 2004). In vitro assays have indicated that the addition of Acrp30 to the human MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line-induced growth arrest and promoted apoptosis (Kang et al, 2005;Wang et al, 2006).…”