Purpose: Examine the association between circulating lipids and breast cancer outcomes in patients enrolled in the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study (MDCS).
Patients and methods: Circulating lipid levels were measured in blood sampled upon enrollment in the female MDCS cohort (N = 17,035). We identified all MDCS participants with incident invasive breast cancer diagnosed between 1991 and 2014. Follow-up time began at breast cancer diagnosis and continued until the first event of breast cancer recurrence, death, emigration, or 5 years of follow-up. We estimated the incidence rates of recurrence at 5 years and fit Cox regression models to compute crude and adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) of breast cancer recurrence as well as all-cause mortality according to cohort-specific tertiles of apolipoprotein A-1 (Apo A-1) and apolipoprotein B (Apo B).
Results: We enrolled 850 eligible patients. During the 5 years of follow-up, 90 invasive breast cancer recurrences were diagnosed over 3807 person-years. In multivariable analyses, high baseline levels of Apo B were associated with an increased rate of recurrence (tertile 3 vs. 1, HR = 2.30 [95% CI 1.13-4.68]). However, high baseline levels of Apo B were not associated with all-cause mortality (tertile 3 vs. 1, HR = 1.23 [95% CI 0.68-2.25]). We observed no associations between levels of Apo A-1 and recurrence (tertile 3 vs. 1, HR = 1.34 [95% CI 0.70-2.58]) or all-cause mortality (tertile 3 vs. 1, HR = 1.12 [95% CI 0.61-2.05]).
Conclusion: High pre-diagnostic levels of Apo B were associated with an increased risk of recurrence among breast cancer patients. Circulating Apo A-1 was not associated with breast cancer outcomes.
Keywords: All-cause mortality; Apolipoprotein A1; Apolipoprotein B; Apolipoproteins; Breast cancer; Cancer; Circulating lipids; Cohort study; Distant recurrence; Dyslipidemia; Lipids; Loco-regional recurrence; Prognosis; Recurrence; Survival.
© 2021. The Author(s).