New paper below [1].
About 18 years ago, a man who headed a PCa group in CA told me to forget PCa-related markers - the best indicator that a man wouldn't be around in 6 months was albumin. My albumin had been 3.9 at diagnosis. I worked to reduce sub-clinical inflammation via polyphenols (inhibitors of NF-kB) and soon had it up at 4.5.
The Modified Glasgow Prognostic Score was developed by a hospital to identify patients at risk for unexpected post-surgical life-threatening events. It uses a simple combination of albumin & C-reactive protein numbers. Hypoalbuminemia (<3.5) was taken as one of the risk factors for unexpected post-op death.
My CA source said that men with albumin above 4 would probably be around in 6 months, whatever the state of their cancer.
The new study (Role of endogenous and exogenous antioxidants in risk of six cancers: evidence from the Mendelian randomization study) concludes with:
"... our study revealed the protective effects of genetic susceptibility to high circulating albumin levels on prostate cancer, providing potential targeted interventions for prostate cancer prevention."
The study looked at six cancers and it's interesting that albumin protection was only noted for PCa. I can't think why albumin would be particularly protective for PCa.
"Our findings suggested that serum albumin has a negative causal association with the risk of prostate cancer [odds ratio (OR) = 0.78 ..."
The various studies that looked at the half-dozen or so common markers of inflammation always seem to be concerned with prognosis - as though inflammation couldn't be reversed, or, if reversed, would not change the prognostic value.
There was a study that looked at inflammation in "healthy" individuals & found that it identified those at risk of death within 6 months.
Sub-clinical inflammation is a killer, imo, & cancer is an inflammatory condition, but inflammation can be controlled.
-Patrick
[1] pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/374...
Front Pharmacol
. 2023 Jun 27;14:1185850. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1185850. eCollection 2023.
Role of endogenous and exogenous antioxidants in risk of six cancers: evidence from the Mendelian randomization study
Jiahao Zhu 1, Jie Lian 1, Xin Wang 1, Ren Wang 1, Xiangyi Pang 1, Benjie Xu 1, Xing Wang 1, Chenyang Li 1, Shengjun Ji 2, Haibo Lu 1
Affiliations
PMID: 37441531 PMCID: PMC10333497 DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2023.1185850
Abstract
Background: Although oxidative stress is known to contribute to cancer, and endogenous and exogenous antioxidants are thought to prevent tumorigenesis by suppressing oxidative stress-induced DNA damage, antioxidants have also been reported to show negative effects on tumor formation, necessitating characterization of the causal associations between antioxidants and cancer risk. Methods: In this study, Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis, primarily inverse-variance weighted MR, was used to assess the causal effect of six endogenous and five exogenous diet-derived antioxidants on the risk of six cancers. MR-Egger intercept test and Cochran's Q statistic were utilized to assess pleiotropy and heterogeneity, respectively. Results: For endogenous antioxidants, a bidirectional two-sample MR analysis was conducted. Our findings suggested that serum albumin has a negative causal association with the risk of prostate cancer [odds ratio (OR) = 0.78, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.68-0.91, p = 0.001]. The risks of the six cancers showed no significant associations with endogenous antioxidants in the converse MR analysis. For exogenous antioxidants, the unidirectional two-sample MR analysis exhibited a nominal relationship between the serum retinol level and non-small-cell lung cancer risk (OR = 0.29, 95% CI: 0.11-0.76, p = 0.011). Conclusions: Thus, our study revealed the protective effects of genetic susceptibility to high circulating albumin levels on prostate cancer, providing potential targeted interventions for prostate cancer prevention.
Keywords: Mendelian randomization study; cancer prevention; endogenous antioxidant; exogenous antioxidant; oxidative stress.
Copyright © 2023 Zhu, Lian, Wang, Wang, Pang, Xu, Wang, Li, Ji and Lu.
