Abstract
Women with breast cancer are a growing population due to improved screening and treatment. It has been described that chemotherapy can negatively affect patients’ metabolism. The aim of this study is to assess weight gain during chemotherapy treatment in an interim analysis on an ongoing prospective cohort of women with early breast cancer. To help untangle the many possible reasons for weight change, we examine blood tests, Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs), and bone mineral density (BMD). We find that the 38 women that have measurements taken after chemotherapy have an average weight gain of 1.2 kg although not significant. Together with this, there is a significant drop in HDL cholesterol, an increase in triglycerides, and a non-significant tendency towards decreased insulin sensitivity. PROs show that although the women experience more pain and fatigue, they have higher activity levels. BMD is at an expected level according to age. All in all, we see an increased focus on physical activity and nutrition, leading to less severe metabolic changes as previously reported. However, even though more measures are taken, we still see an overall negative metabolic impact with unknown long-term implications.
Highlights
The treatment of breast cancer (BC) has steadily improved over the last decades and even though we see more cases of breast cancer each year, survival rates are increasing in Europe, mainly due to screening programs and improvements in treatment [1]
All patients were diagnosed with breast cancer, and all received chemotherapy
Our study does not show a significant increase in body weight, but on average our patients put on 1.2 kg during chemotherapy treatment
Summary
The treatment of breast cancer (BC) has steadily improved over the last decades and even though we see more cases of breast cancer each year, survival rates are increasing in Europe, mainly due to screening programs and improvements in treatment [1]. 25% of all new cancers in women [3], that amounts to a considerable amount of long-term breast cancer survivors Considering this positive development, it is imperative that the long-term consequences of the oncological treatment are further investigated. This can, in turn, provide clinicians with a better understanding of who to observe closer and help counteract possible negative effects of treatment. It has been described for close to half a century that women receiving adjuvant chemotherapy are compromised metabolically [4,5,6] This is mainly observed as an average weight gain of 3–5 kg, but with a great variance among individual patients [4,5,6]. Most post-menopausal women with hormone receptor positive early BC will receive aromatase inhibitors, which are known to further deteriorate the metabolic profile, the lipid profile [8]
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