Glioma is a common primary tumors of the central nervous system[8]. Due to its invasive nature, surgery is seldom capable of removing all tumor cells. This means that glioma tends to re-occur postoperatively [9]. Whilst age, mental status, tumor grade and histology, the extent of surgical resection and radiotherapy regime allow physicians to predict disease course with some accuracy [10–12], few prognostic biomarkers exist in comparison to other cancers.
Hyperlipidemia is a negative prognostic factor for patients with prostate cancer and gastric cancer [13, 14]. Little is known, however, as to the prognosis values of the lipid profiling in glioma patients. Hence, our study retrospectively compared the lipid profiles of glioma patients with those of healthy controls. This revealed TC (5.32 ± 1.25 mmol/L) and LDL-C (3.36 ± 1.23 mmol/L) concentration to be significantly lower in patients with glioma than that in healthy controls. Furthermore, we assessed the association between serum lipid (TC, TG, HDL-C, LDL-C and ApoA-I) concentrations prior to glioma surgical intervention and disease survival. This revealed survival rates to be significantly negatively associated with serum TC concentrations (HR = 2.186, 95% CI = 1.427–3.350; P < 0.05). This correlation was found to be independent of other variables predicting prognosis, suggesting TC to potentially play a causal role in worsened disease prognosis. Consistent with previous works, lower age and WHO grade and the initiation of post-operative chemoradiotherapy were also significant independent predictors of favorable OS [15–17]. In addition, our study showed RFS rates to also be higher in patients with decreased TC levels than in patients with higher TC levels (HR = 2.270, 95% CI = 1.528–3.372; P < 0.05). Thus, our findings indicated that the pre-therapy serum TC level may serve as a novel, independent prognostic factor for glioma patients.
Cholesterol is localized in lipid rafts-membrane micro-domains, which mainly function to assemble the signal transduction machinery. Studies support a critical involvement of cholesterol in the modulation of proteins implicated in key cellular signaling pathways. Furthermore, due to altered cytoskeleton, cell polarity and angiogenesis, these pathways’ organization can lead to malignant transformation, including colon, breast and nasopharyngeal cancer[18–21]. Some studies have indicated a positive association between high levels of total cholesterol (TC) and overall mortality in cancer patients [22]. For example, Zhou et al., [7] found, by pooling patient-level data from > 24,655 individuals, that TC is a negative prognostic factor for OS and disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with cancers. Similarly, the present study also showed a high TC level to be strongly correlated with poor OS (HR = 2.186, 95% CI = 1.427–3.350; P < 0.05) and RFS rates (HR = 2.270, 95% CI = 1.528–3.372; P < 0.05). TC is an independent prognostic factor for both OS and DFS survival of glioma patients.
The role of TC in glioma is not well understood. Cholesterol is a critical component of cell membranes [23]. Furthermore, it acts as a signaling molecule and energy resource, enhancing cell growth [24]. Glioma tumor tissues contain higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids compared with the normal brain. Svenja et [25] found that extracellular lipid loading augments hypoxic paracrine signaling and promotes glioma angiogenesis and macrophage infiltration. NMR provides specific information on the neurochemistry of human tissues. Therefore, NMR has been used to characterize the total lipid fraction of neoplastic and healthy human brain tissue. By utilizing 1H- and 13C-NMR, cholesterol esters, formed by the esterification of cholesterol with long-chain fatty acids, have been shown to only be present in high-grade gliomas [26]. Since levels of free cholesterol are strictly regulated by negative feedback mechanisms, targeting the formation of cholesterol esters could be the potential therapeutic strategy in glioma patients. When cells need cholesterol, cholesterol esters could quickly release cholesterol for cell growth or survival. Since cholesterol esters are absent in healthy brain tissues, preventing cholesterol ester utilization may be a possible therapeutic strategy to inhibit malignant glioma growth [27, 28]. Our study indicated patients with high serum TC concentrations to have a significantly poorer 5-year OS. We additionally found that recurrence was associated with higher serum TC levels (5.71 ± 1.36 mmol/L, P < 0.05). Further research is, however, needed to clarify the underlying causal mechanisms here.