Abstract
The mechanisms of obesity-induced breast carcinogenesis are not clear. One hypothesis is that high levels of adipokines could promote breast cancer (BC) development. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation of resistin, visfatin, adiponectin, and leptin with BC risk in pre- and postmenopausal females. A total of 82 BC newly diagnosed and histologically confirmed patients and 68 age and BMI matched healthy controls were enrolled. Both groups were subdivided into post- and premenopausal subgroups. Resistin, visfatin, adiponectin, and leptin were measured by ELISA. There were significantly higher levels of leptin, resistin, and visfatin in postmenopausal BC patients than their respective controls. Only in postmenopausal subgroups, leptin, resistin, and visfatin levels were positively correlated with TNM staging, tumor size, lymph node (LN) metastasis, and histological grading. In postmenopausal females, multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that adiponectin, leptin, visfatin, and resistin were risk factors for BC. Our results suggested that serum resistin, leptin, adiponectin, and visfatin levels as risk factors for postmenopausal BC may provide a potential link with clinicopathological features and are promising to be novel biomarkers for postmenopausal BC.