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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutritional Epidemiology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1538285
This article is part of the Research Topic Nutrition in Cancer Patients Undergoing Targeted Therapy: From Mechanisms to Clinical Practice View all articles
Prognostic impact of visceral and subcutaneous fat area in stage I-III colon cancer patients with cachexia: a population-based multicenter study
Provisionally accepted- 1 Haikou Hospital Affiliated to Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Haikou, China
- 2 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Hainan Affiliated Hospital of Hainan Medical University, Haikou, China
- 3 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Chengdu Second People's Hospital, Chengdu, China
- 4 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Central South University Xiangya School of Medicine Affiliated Haikou Hospital, Haikou, Hainan Province, China
- 5 Department of Colorectal Cancer Surgery, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Chengdu, China
Background: Adipose tissue reduction is one of the features in patients with cancer cachexia. However, it remains unclear whether visceral fat area (VFA) and subcutaneous fat area (SFA) contribute differently to the progression of cancer cachexia in colon cancer patients. This study aims to investigate the prognostic impact of VFA and SFA in stage I-III colon cancer patients with cachexia.Methods: Patients diagnosed with stage I-III colon cancer were preoperatively measured for VFA and SFA and then divided into VFA-high (VFA-H) and VFA-low (VFA-L) groups, as well as SFA-high (SFA-H) and SFA-low (SFA-L) groups. The prognostic impact of VFA and SFA for colon cancer patients with cachexia were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis.Results: A total of 916 colon cancer patients (377 with cachexia and 539 without) were included in the study. In patients with cachexia, the estimated five-year overall survival (OS) was higher in the VFA-H group compared to the VFA-L group (p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in five-year OS between the SFA-L and SFA-H groups (p = 0.076). Cox regression analysis indicated that VFA (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.55, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.40 to 0.76; p < 0.001) was an independent prognostic factor for patients with cachexia. SFA (HR = 0.78, 95% CI 0.59 to 1.03; p = 0.076) was not an independent prognostic factor for patients with cachexia.Preoperative VFA, but not SFA was a useful prognostic factor for long-term outcomes in stage I-III colon cancer patients with cachexia. More attention should be paid to VFA in colon cancer patients with cachexia.
Keywords: Colon Cancer, Cancer cachexia, visceral fat area, Subcutaneous fat area, overall survival
Received: 02 Dec 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liang, Wen, Liu, Wang, Wu and Pan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tao Pan, Department of Colorectal Cancer Surgery, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Chengdu, China
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