Changes in body fat and lipid metabolism in testicular cancer patients undergoing curative chemotherapy.

Abstract

337 Background: Testicular cancer (TC) survivors are at increased risk to develop metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. We assessed the utility of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H1-MRS) and aortic Pulse Wave Velocity (aoPWV) with MRI to detect the early effects of chemotherapy-induced changes in lipid metabolism on liver fat storage and vascular function in testicular cancer patients undergoing curative treatment. Methods: Nineteen 19 chemo-naïve TC patients (age 20–54 years) were studied before, shortly after (<3 months), and 9 months after the start of three or four cycles of cisplatin-based chemotherapy. At each visit, fasting blood samples for serum glucose, insulin, HbA1c, and lipids were collected, and abdominal subcutaneous (scFat) and visceral fat (visFat) volume, hepatic triglyceride content (HTgC), and aoPWV were assessed by MRI. All measurements were performed using validated methodology. Data were analysed using RM-ANOVA. Results: Shorty after cessation of chemotherapy there was an increase in fasting serum insulin (5.7±4.4 vs. 9.6±6.3; p=0.05), HOMA-index (1.3± 0.3 vs. 2.3± 0.4; p=0.006), HbA1c (5.2±0.3 vs. 5.3±0.6; p=0.03), total cholesterol (4.88±1.31 vs. 5.61±1.50; p=0.002) and LDL-cholesterol (3.31±1.16 vs. 3.73±1.41; p=0.02). This coincided with relative volume increases of scFAT (6.9%; 95%CI 0.4–13.4%) and visFAT (18.7%; 95%CI 2.4–35.1%), a unsignificant increase in HTgC (47.4%; 95%CI −5.4–129.5%). AoPWV did not change (0.2%; 95%CI −0.5–0.8%). All parameters that were increased at 3 months returned to baseline at 9 months, but the increases in scFAT and visFAT remained. Conclusions: Cisplatinum-based chemotherapy in TC patients is associated with disturbances of glucose and lipid metabolism shortly after therapy but returns to baseline later. These changes did not translate into significant increases in HTgC and aoPWV, suggesting that these measures are of limited value to detect early chemotherapy-induced changes. Interestingly, scFAT and visFAT showed sustained increases, and this may explain the observed higher incidence in metabolic syndrome and (ensuing) cardiovascular disease in chemotherapy-treated TC patients.