Weight change in women with breast cancer (IIIB) after treatment

Abstract

Introduction: the effect of overweight and obesity in patients with breast cancer has been widely described. Despite the recognition of ethnic differences in these associations, information is still lacking for the Latin American population.

Methods: a retrospective, longitudinal cohort study with non-probabilistic sampling. The main objective was to describe how weight behaved after multimodal cancer treatment in women with locally advanced luminal A subtype breast cancer.

Results: the average age at cancer diagnosis was 52 years. The average follow-up time was 2.3 years, during which there was a 12.1% rate of recurrence. Most patients were overweight/obese (67.56%), with an average variation of -0.17 kg at the end of follow up. Patients with metastasis had a greater weight loss than those without recurrence (-5.06 kg, p<0.05).

Conclusions: overweight and obesity are a prevalent characteristic of locally advanced luminal A breast cancer patients. There was no conclusive evidence of increased risk of metastasis or death related to excess weight in this population. To the contrary, weight loss was a statistically significant characteristic of patients with distal recurrence during follow up, although it was not established as a causal factor