Higher serum carcinoembryonic antigen levels associate with more frequent development of incident fractures in Korean women: a longitudinal study using the national health insurance claim data.

Background: Pro-inflammatory cytokines play important roles in bone metabolism and several studies have shown that carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) may promote inflammation. We investigated the association of serum CEA levels with the risk of osteoporosis and incident fracture.

Methods: We performed a small cross-sectional study with 302 Korean women and a large, longitudinal study with 7192 Korean women in an average 3-year follow-up period. For the cross-sectional study, bone mineral density (BMD) and bone turnover markers (BTMs) were measured. For the longitudinal study, incident fractures in the follow-up period were identified by using the selected International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) codes and the nationwide claims database of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service of Korea.

Results: In the cross-sectional study, serum CEA levels correlated negatively with BMD at the lumbar spine (γ=-0.023; P=0.029) and positively with BTMs (γ=0.122 to 0.138, P=0.002 to P<0.001) after adjustment for confounding variables. In the longitudinal study, 254 (3.5%) women developed incident fractures in the follow-up period (2.8±1.3 years). After adjustment for potential confounders, the hazard ratio (HR) per 1 ng/mL increment of the baseline CEA level for the development of incident fracture was 1.22 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.05-1.42]. The HR was markedly higher in subjects in the highest CEA quartile category compared with those in the lowest CEA quartile category (HR=1.54, 95% CI: 1.04-2.28).

Conclusion: Therefore, serum CEA may be a biomarker of the risk of incident fracture in postmenopausal Korean women.