The role of lipocalin-2 serum levels in the diagnostics of endometrial cancer.

Background: Endometrial cancer is one of the most common tumor of the woman genital organs.

Objective: The goal of this study was to determine the lipocalin-2 levels in patients with endometrial cancer compared to those with normal endometrium or mild endometrial pathologies.

Methods: Study included 123 patients with BMI > 21 kg/m2 who were admitted due to abnormal bleeding, in which 52 patients with endometrial cancer. The NGAL, CA125, HE4 serum levels were determined for all patients.

Results: Significantly lower median NGAL serum levels were found in a group of patients with normal endometrium compared to the endometrial cancer group, p= 0.006. NGAL protein area under ROC curves value as a diagnostic test, differentiating between endometrial cancer and other benign changes endometrium is AUC - 0.81 (p< 0.00001). The NGAL protein had a high sensitivity in all patients included in the analysis: 84% vs. 82% in pre-menopausal patients, and 81% in postmenopausal women with a specificity of 78%, 80% and 87%, respectively. The independent variable for FIGO and model logistic regression proves that NGAL is statistically significant (p= 0.000602), the odds ratio is 3.66. The model for grading shows, that NGAL increase by one ng/ml increases risk chances by 2.32 times in diagnosis with less cancer differentiation.

Conclusions: Our preliminary studies demonstrate that lipocalin-2 may be of value in the diagnostics of uterine body cancers.