Prevalence of metabolic disorders in obese triple negative breast cancer patients

Introduction Obesity is a risk factor for hormone receptor positive breast cancer in postmenopausal women. However, the association between triple negative breast cancer risk and metabolic abnormalities is not yet clear. Moreover, little is known regarding the prevalence of these abnormalities in this group of women. Here we present the prevalence of metabolic abnormalities in a single cohort of obese postmenopausal triple negative breast cancer patients. Methods Monocentric, retrospective, single cohort analysis of triple negative breast cancer patients treated between January 2008 and December 2017 at Pius Hospital Oldenburg. For quantitative or numerical variables, central tendency and dispersion measures were used. Values are presented as mean number of patients or percentage. Results Among 2745 breast cancer cases, 43 obese postmenopausal patients with a mean age of 64 years (range 51 to 90) had triple negative breast cancer. Most were diagnosed with invasive ductal (n = 39; 90.7 %), high-grade carcinoma (n = 35; 81.4 %), with a tumor size between 2 and 5 cm (n = 19; 44.2 %). Half the cohort lacked lymph node involvement; 5 patients showed distant metastasis (11.6 %). The majority had no family history of breast cancer (n = 32; 74.4 %), were non-smokers (n = 37; 86 %), and had a history of pregnancy (n = 35; 81.4 %). Frequent metabolic abnormalities included hypertension (n = 31; 72.1 %) and dyslipidemia (n = 36; 83.7 %) whereas type 2 diabetes or glucose intolerance were less prevalent (n = 13; 30.2 %). Conclusion Hypertension and dyslipidemia were more prevalent in the study cohort than type 2 diabetes. Moderately obese patients were most frequently affected. These findings partially align with international studies which observed an association between triple negative breast cancer and elevated levels of blood glucose and triglycerides, but not between tumor disease and hypertension.