Adipose tissue and skeletal muscle wasting precede clinical diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Babic A, Rosenthal MH, Sundaresan TK, Khalaf N, Lee V, Brais LK, Loftus M, Caplan L, Denning S, Gurung A, Harrod J, Schawkat K, Yuan C, Wang QL, Lee AA, Biller LH, Yurgelun MB, Ng K, Nowak JA, Aguirre AJ, Bhatia SN, Vander Heiden MG, Van Den Eeden SK, Caan BJ, Wolpin BM. Adipose tissue and skeletal muscle wasting precede clinical diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Nature communications. 2023 Jul 18; 14(1):4317.

Related HSR&D Project(s)

• CDA 21-083 – Health informatics approaches to reduce missed opportunities in diagnosis of pancreatic cancer

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Abstract:

Patients with pancreatic cancer commonly develop weight loss and muscle wasting. Whether adipose tissue and skeletal muscle losses begin before diagnosis and the potential utility of such losses for earlier cancer detection are not well understood. We quantify skeletal muscle and adipose tissue areas from computed tomography (CT) imaging obtained 2 months to 5 years before cancer diagnosis in 714 pancreatic cancer cases and 1748 matched controls. Adipose tissue loss is identified up to 6 months, and skeletal muscle wasting is identified up to 18 months before the clinical diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and is not present in the matched control population. Tissue losses are of similar magnitude in cases diagnosed with localized compared with metastatic disease and are not correlated with at-diagnosis circulating levels of CA19-9. Skeletal muscle wasting occurs in the 1-2 years before pancreatic cancer diagnosis and may signal an upcoming diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.