Impact of post-diagnosis weight change on survival outcomes in Black and White breast cancer patients

• Published in: Breast cancer research : BCR Vol. 23; no. 1; p. 18
• Main Authors: Shang, Lihua, Hattori, Masaya, Fleming, Gini, Jaskowiak, Nora, Hedeker, Donald, Olopade, Olufunmilayo I, Huo, Dezheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 04.02.2021; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Adult; Age; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Analysis; Black People; Body Mass Index; Body size; Body Weight; Body weight loss; Body Weights and Measures; Breast cancer; Breast Neoplasms - diagnosis; Breast Neoplasms - epidemiology; Breast Neoplasms - mortality; Breast Neoplasms - therapy; Cachexia; Cancer; Cancer patients; Cancer therapies; Care and treatment; Case-Control Studies; Chemotherapy; Comorbidity; Death; Diagnosis; Electronic health records; Ethnicity; Female; Humans; Medical diagnosis; Medical prognosis; Metastases; Metastasis; Middle Aged; Minority & ethnic groups; Mortality; Neoplasm Grading; Neoplasm Staging; Obesity; Oncology, Experimental; Overweight; Patient outcomes; Patients; Prognosis; Proportional Hazards Models; Race; Racial disparities; Radiation therapy; Registries; Regression analysis; Survival; Survival Analysis; Weight change; Weight control; White People; Womens health; United States > US; Body mass index; Breast cancer; Prognosis; Weight change; Racial disparities
• ISSN: 1465-542X; 1465-5411; 1465-542X
• DOI: 10.1186/s13058-021-01397-9

To evaluate weight change patterns over time following the diagnosis of breast cancer and to examine the association of post-diagnosis weight change and survival outcomes in Black and White patients. The study included 2888 women diagnosed with non-metastatic breast cancer in 2000-2017 in Chicago. Longitudinal repeated measures of weight and height were collected, along with a questionnaire survey including questions on body size. Multilevel mixed-effects models were used to examine changes in body mass index (BMI). Delayed entry Cox proportional hazards models were used to investigate the impacts of changing slope of BMI on survival outcomes. At diagnosis, most patients were overweight or obese with a mean BMI of 27.5 kg/m and 31.5 kg/m for Blacks and Whites, respectively. Notably, about 45% of the patients had cachexia before death and substantial weight loss started about 30 months before death. In multivariable-adjusted analyses, compared to stable weight, BMI loss (> 0.5 kg/m /year) showed greater than 2-fold increased risk in overall survival (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.60, 95% CI 1.88-3.59), breast cancer-specific survival (HR = 3.05, 95% CI 1.91-4.86), and disease-free survival (HR = 2.12, 95% CI 1.52-2.96). The associations were not modified by race, age at diagnosis, and pre-diagnostic weight. BMI gain (> 0.5 kg/m /year) was also related to worse survival, but the effect was weak (HR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.10-2.33 for overall survival). BMI loss is a strong predictor of worse breast cancer outcomes. Growing prevalence of obesity may hide diagnosis of cancer cachexia, which can occur in a large proportion of breast cancer patients long before death.