Wu W, et al. - In this two-center cohort study, researchers aimed to assess the relationship between hepatic steatosis (HS) and liver metastasis in non-metastatic breast cancer (BC) patients. As per findings, in patients with BC, HS could serve as an independent factor to decrease liver metastasis. They recommended additional prospective studies to confirm this finding.

Methods

• Researchers retrospectively reviewed patients who underwent treatment for BC at two affiliated hospitals of Southern Medical University, between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2015.
• Based on the presence of HS, they divided BC patients into the study and control groups.
• Analysis was performed of the association between HS and liver metastasis, adjusting for the confounding factors using Cox regression and propensity score case-match analysis.

Results

• This study included 1230 female BC patients; 372 (30.2%) patients were diagnosed with HS (at the time of diagnosis BC or before).
• The study group had significantly higher cumulative liver metastasis-free survival (MFS) rate in comparison to the control group (hazard ratio 0.61; 95% confidence interval 0.40–0.94; P = 0.024).
• Multivariate analysis suggested that HS was an independent protective factor for local liver metastasis (HR 0.55; 0.35–0.86; P = 0.008).
• After one-to-one matching of the study group (344) with the control group (344), the study group had persistently significantly better liver MFS (HR 0.42; 0.26–0.69; P = 0.001).