Circulating adropin levels in patients with endometrium cancer

Adropin is a recently identified protein in liver, brain and many peripheral tissues, which is important in energy homeostasis. The purpose of this study is to determine adropin levels in patients with endometrium cancer (EC).

A total of 74 patients (47 EC patients and 27 healthy controls) were included in the study. Fasting venous blood samples were collected from all patients. Serum adropin levels were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The correlations between serum adropin levels and clinicopathologic variables were determined.

In body mass index and age-matched groups of patients, adropin levels were determined lower in patients with EC than control group (p < 0.01). Adropin levels were negatively correlated with age (r = -0.265, p = 0.023), homeostasis model-resistance index (HOMA-IR) (r = -0.294, p = 0.005) and fasting insulin levels (r = -0.292, p = 0.001). It was shown that in receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis, at cut-off value ≤ 1.055 (ng/ml), adropin had 92.7% sensitivity, 91.5% specificity and had AUC = 0.948, CI; 0.894-1.000 for diagnosis of EC (p < 0.001).

Adropin seems to be an important protein in pathogenesis of EC. Clearly, there are largely unknown aspects of adropin in EC pathophysiology and require further multi-centered, molecular and genetic studies including high number of cases.