The Predictive Value Of Serum Lipid Profiles For The Response To Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy In Breast Cancer Patients

Background There is still a lack of effective predictors of the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy(NAC).The aim of this study was to investigate the predictive value of serum lipid profiles for the response to NAC in breast cancer patients.Methods A total of 533 breast cancer patients who had received NAC were retrospectively studied.The levels of pretreatment serum lipids,including total cholesterol(TC),triglycerides(TG),high-density lipoprotein cholesterol(HDL-C),low-density lipoprotein cholesterol(LDL-C)and lipoprotein(LP)(α),and clinicopathological characteristics were collected to assess the predictive roles of these features.Results Compared with normal individuals,breast cancer patients were found to have significantly lower levels of TC,TG,HDL-C and LDL-C.Moreover,the results of receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curves suggested that the levels of TG and HDL-C at diagnosis could be used as predictors of the response to NAC only in the estrogen receptor(ER)-positive subgroup.Through univariate analyses,we found that thepatients with a low level of TG(< 1.155 mmol/L)or high level of HDL-C(≥ 1.305 mmol/L)in the ER-positive subgroup had more favorable clinical responses than the other patients in the subgroup.Furthermore,a high level of HDL-C(≥ 1.305 mmol/L,P=0.007)was an independent predictor of NAC efficacy by multivariate analyses.Conclusions The pretreatment level of serum HDL-C could be used as a predictor of the response to NAC in ER-positive breast cancer patients,and the optimal cut-off value was 1.305 mmol/L.These results may be helpful in making treatment decisions.