Leptin could be another relevant indicator of breast cancer risk.

2003 MAY 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Measuring a woman's leptin levels may offer an additional indicator of her risk of developing breast cancer, say researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Their small study, published in the Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggested that because a woman's production of leptin may reveal her history of eating dietary fat, reading leptin levels may offer more prognostic information than just measuring body mass index and the amount of fat she currently eats.

And because increased fat is associated with increased bioavailable estrogen and breast cancer risk, "measuring leptin could be an additional marker for assessing breast cancer risk," said the lead author, Richard Hajek, PhD, an instructor at M.D. Anderson's Center for Research on Minority Health.

"None of these measures are perfect, but the amount of leptin found in a woman's bloodstream can indicate her accumulation of fat over the years," he said. "Measuring current body weight and fat intake doesn't offer that kind of perspective."

Leptin is a hormone produced by fat tissue that signals to the brain when it is time to stop eating. Simply put, researchers say that, ideally, as body fat increases, more leptin is produced, which acts to reduce food intake, and the converse is true - as body fat decreases, less leptin is produced, which stimulates food intake.

But leptin levels also can change according to a pattern of eating, said Hajek. For example, a thin woman with a low leptin level who binges on fatty hamburgers for weeks or months, with a corresponding increase in body fat, will produce a higher level of leptin. If she goes ...