A high serum-free fatty acid level is associated with cancer

The objectives of this work were to investigate whether the serum-free fatty acid (FFA) level is meaningful in cancer patients and its role in cancer diagnosis.

A total of 2206 patients were divided into a cancer group (n = 1019) and a noncancer group (n = 1187). Age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and serum FFA and serum albumin levels were collected. Cancer patients were divided into subgroups according to the location of the cancer. We then compared serum FFA levels among the tumor subgroups. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to further evaluate the diagnostic ability of the FFA level. SPSS 22.0 software was used to analyze the results.

The FFA level was higher in the cancer group than in the noncancer group. According to the multivariate analysis, there was also an increased risk of cancer associated with a high FFA level after adjusting for old age, female sex, and a low BMI. In the subgroup analysis, the FFA level in patients with lung cancer, gastric cancer, thyroid cancer, rectal cancer, colon cancer, and ovarian cancer was significantly higher than that in noncancer patients. The area under the effect-time curve (AUC) of FFAs in the whole cancer group was 0.58, while the thyroid cancer, rectal cancer, and ovarian cancer subgroups had AUCs > 0.6.

Our study provides clinical evidence to support that fatty acid metabolism is associated with cancers and demonstrates that a high FFA level in the serum may be an indicator of cancer.