Abstract
BACKGROUND: Endometrial carcinoma is a common gynecological malignancy, LNM is a crucial factor affecting the prognosis of endometrial cancer patients, with a significant impact on survival rates and treatment effectiveness. Serum lipocalin-2, PDK1, and NGALR have been found to be abnormally expressed in various tumors and are potentially associated with tumor metastasis. Therefore, this study aims to investigate these relationships and evaluate the predictive efficacy of these biomarkers, which may provide new insights and methods for the early diagnosis and treatment of postmenopausal endometrial cancer with LNM. METHODS: Totally 133 postmenopausal endometrial cancer patients treated in Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital and 100 healthy subjects were included in this study. According to the postoperative pathological diagnosis, 133 patients were divided into LNM group (n=47) and non LNM group (n=86). RESULTS: The serum lipocalin-2, PDK1, and NGALR levels in patients with endometrial cancer were significantly higher than those in the healthy group (P<0.05). The results of logistic regression analysis showed that the lipocalin-2, PDK1, and NGALR were all factors affecting LNM (P<0.05). Area under the curve (AUC) of lipocalin-2, PDK1 and NGALR were 0.755, 0.778 and 0.856 respectively by establishing receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, with the specificity of 67.50%, 67.50% and 82.50%, respectively. The sensitivities were 80.00%, 82.22% and 75.56%, respectively. The AUC (0.925), sensitivity (98.89%) and specificity (70.00%) of the joint tests were higher than those of the other three tests. The joint tests had higher diagnostic value for LNM of postmenopausal endometrial carcinoma. CONCLUSIONS: The serum levels of lipocalin-2, PDK1, and NGALR in postmenopausal endometrial carcinoma patients and patients with LNM were significantly increased, and the combined detection had higher diagnostic value for postmenopausal endometrial carcinoma LNM, which would be beneficial to guide the diagnosis and treatment of postmenopausal endometrial carcinoma LNM in clinic.