Prognostic value of activin A level in patients with advanced lung cancer and sarcopenia

Abstract

The aim of this work is to determine the prognostic role of activin A in patients with advanced lung cancer and sarcopenia. Materials and methods. Forty patients with advanced pulmonary adenocarcinoma who received treatment in the medical center “ONCOLIFE” from 2020 to 2022 were studied. Computed tomography (CT) was used to measure skeletal muscle index at the third lumbar vertebra level expressed in cm2/m2. The criteria for sarcopenia using CT was <55 cm2/m2 for men and <39 cm2/m2 for women. Determination of activin A (DAC00B, RnD Systems) was carried out by the immunoenzymatic method based on using the “sandwich” variant of solid-phase immunoenzymatic analysis. Results. Overall survival in patients with a high level of activin A was worse than in patients with a low level (22.7 % vs. 64.2 % respectively; p = 0.017 by the log-rank test). Conclusions. A high level of activin A in the blood plasma can contribute to the worsening of the severity of sarcopenia, thereby affecting the survival of cancer patients. Understanding and finding new molecular targets underlying muscle atrophy will help identify new potential for treating patients with advanced cancer.

Keywords

• activins
• sarcopenia
• lung adenocarcinoma
• survival