# Correlation between abdominal visceral fat and the risk of endometrial cancer in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome

## TL;DR

This study finds that higher visceral fat and other factors increase the risk of endometrial cancer in women with PCOS.

## Contribution

Identifies visceral fat area and other biomarkers as potential risk indicators for endometrial cancer in PCOS patients.

## Key findings

- BMI, HOMA-IR, VFA, and HER2 are independent risk factors for endometrial cancer in PCOS patients.
- The model combining these factors has high diagnostic accuracy (AUC=0.973).
- Visceral fat area shows strong correlation with increased cancer risk.

## Abstract

To explore the correlation between abdominal fat and the occurrence risk of endometrial cancer (EC) in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

The clinical information of 120 PCOS patients receiving treatment in our hospital from March 2019 to April 2022 were included in this study. Patients were divided into two groups, endometrial cancer (EC, n=35) and normal group (NM, n=85). Statistical analysis included t-test, c2-test, and Pearson's correlation coefficient. We analysed the data using logistic regression. The predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of the prediction model were assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) and calibration curves.

The incidence rate of EC in women with PCOS is 10.91% (12/110). Significant differences were found in waist circumference, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, body mass index (BMI), waist-hip ratio (WHR), insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR), visceral fat area (VFA) oestrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2), estradiol (E2), and luteinizing hormone (LH) between the two groups (P<0.05). No statistical difference was found in age, hip circumference, menopause, use of intrauterine device, progesterone (P) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) between the groups (P>0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that BMI, HOMA-IR, VFA and HER2 were independent influencing factors of EC in PCOS patients (P<0.05). The AUC of BMI, HOMA-IR, VFA, HER2 were 0.878 (95%CI: 0.810~0.946), 0.831 (95%CI: 0.751~0.911), 0.816 (95%CI: 0.704~0.929) and 0.737 (95%CI: 0.634,0.840), respectively. The model had more diagnostic effectiveness (AUC=0.973).

In PCOS disease, high-level BMI, HOMA-IR, VFA, and positive HER2 show an increased risk in the incidence of EC. These findings suggest that BMI, HOMA-IR, VFA, and HER2 are potential markers for Risk assessment of EC.

HER2: Human epidermal growth factor receptor-2, E2: estradiol, P: progesterone, LH: Luteinizing hormone, FSH: Follicle-stimulating hormone.