Background: The goal of the present study was to determine whether serum transthyretin level can be used as a novel prognostic biomarker for patients with gastric cancer.
Patients and methods: Serum levels of transthyretin were examined before treatment in 42 patients with gastric cancer, 30 of whom underwent curative operation and had their prognostic factors analyzed.
Results: In an analysis using a receiver operating characteristic curve, transthyretin was evaluated as a useful biomarker to predict the overall survival of the patients (P = 0.033), and a level of 22.8 mg/dL was determined as the cut off value. The transthyretin levels exhibited statistically significant correlations with total protein (r = 0.598, P < 0.001), albumin (r = 0.626, P < 0.001), and retinol binding protein (r = 0.753, P < 0.001). On the other hand, the transthyretin levels showed statistically significant inverse correlations with tumor size (r = -0.753, P < 0.001) and the numbers of involved lymph nodes (r = -0.453, P = 0.012). The patients with serum transthyretin levels of <22.8 mg/dL showed poorer prognosis than those with levels of ≥22.8 mg/dL (P = 0.033); therefore, serum transthyretin level was an independent prognostic factor for the gastric cancer patients (hazard ratio: 0.420, 95% confidence interval: 0.180-0.985, P = 0.042).
Conclusions: Anthropometric measurement of serum transthyretin can be useful for predicting the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer.
Keywords: Gastric cancer; Malnutrition; Overall survival; Prealbumin; Prognosis; Transthyretin.
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