The association between serum lipid levels and histological type of breast cancer

Background: Studies have investigated the association between serum lipid or apolipoprotein levels and breast cancer risk. However, the relationship between serum lipid and apolipoprotein levels and histological type of breast cancer remains unclear. In the present study, we observed the association between serum lipids and the histological type of breast cancer (BC), particularly to estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor ( PR) positive BC. Materials: and methods: 220 cases of pathology-confirmed breast cancer were retrospectively collected in this study. Patients’ demographic information, clinical data, and pathological features were obtained from medical records. Serum levels including high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-c), low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-c), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), ApoA, ApoB, ApoE and lipoprotein a(LP(a)) were collected before treatment. Logistic regression analyses were used to show the association between serum lipids and subtypes of breast cancer. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to analyze predictive performance. Results: : There were 70 ER-negative and 73 PR-negative BC. Patients with ER-negative BC had higher HDL-c, higher LDL-c, and higher LP(a) than ER-positive one(p < 0.05). Patients with PR-negative BC were more likely to have high LDL-c and high LP(a) than patients with PR-positive one (p < 0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that serum HDL-c (odds ratio (OR): 0.27, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.10-0.76), LDL-c (OR: 0.19, 95%CI: 0.04-0.93) and LP(a) (OR: 0.23,95%CI: 0.07-0.80) levels were negatively associated with ER-positive BC and serum HDL-c and LDL-c levels were significantly negatively associated with PR-positive BC(OR:0.32, 95%CI:0.12-0.82; OR:0.14, 95%CI:0.03-0.77). In addition, ER and PR positive BC was negatively associated with serum HDL-c and LDL-c levels (OR = 0.39, 95% CI: 0.17-0.91; OR = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.06-0.85) after adjusting with confounders. Furthermore, serum HDL-c (OR = 0.13, 95% CI: 0.02-0.87) was still independently associated with ER and PR positive BC in postmenopausal women. The area under the curves (AUCs) of HDL-c to identify ER-positive BC, PR-positive BC and ER and PR positive BC were 0.65 (95%CI:0.58-0.73, P < 0.01), 0.62 (95%CI:0.54-0.69, P < 0.01) and 0.64 (95%CI:0.56-0.72, P < 0.01), respectively. Conclusion: Serum HDL and LDL levels were related to ER or PR positive BC.