| dc.description.abstract | Breast cancer is the most frequent malignancy among women and is often associated with fatigue during treatment. Fatigue may be considered as a sickness behavior syndrome, which is induced by activation of the innate immune system. Heat shock protein alpha (Hsp90α) is one molecule that function as a down regulatory molecule, but also is hypothesized to function as a signaling molecule in generation of sickness behavior. Little is known of fatigue in treatment-naïve breast cancer patients. Thus, we performed a cross-sectional study in 360 women with early-stage treatment-naïve breast cancer. Fatigue was assessed by patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) using fatigue Visual Analog scale (fVAS) and Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Fatigue (FACIT-F). Hsp90α in serum was analyzed by a sandwich ELISA method. The cutoff for fatigue of clinical relevance was defined as fVAS score ≥50mm and mean FACIT -F score ≥0.93. Results showed a prevalence of 18-20% fatigue in this group of patients. Correlation analysis by Spearman's rho between s-Hsp90α and fatigue measurements indicated a positive association with both fVAS scores (r=0.14,p=0.01) and FACIT-F mean scores (r=0.17, p=0.001). Only FACIT-F scores were statistically significant in association to s-Hsp90α, in simple linear regression and multivariable regression, with a final result of B=0.011, p=0.029. S-Hsp90α did also show positive correlation with tumor size and HER-2 using Mann-Whitney U. Both in simple linear regression and in the multivariable regression this association was constant. These results are interesting in terms of understanding fatigue in breast cancer. Our finding encourages further tumor biological research including inflammation in the tumor microenvironment. | |