Obesity and lung cancer – is programmed death ligand-1 (PD-1L) expression a connection?

Abstract

Introduction In this retrospective study, the authors evaluated whether obesity-induced immunomodulation impacts the expression of programmed death ligand-1 (PD-1L) in lung cancer cells. Methods A retrospective cross-sectional study was performed. The study included 67 patients. The data did not have a normal distribution. Results For women, using ANOVA test (p = 0.050) with post-hoc analysis, a statistically significant difference in expression was found between women with overweight and women with normal weight (p = 0.040). Conclusions Apart from the above, the authors did not find any statistically significant correlation between PD-1L expression on lung cancer cells and body mass index, either in the whole group or in histological subgroups.

Keywords

• programmed death ligand-1
• lung cancer
• obesity
• oncology
• pulmonology
• obesitology