Decreased pretreatment serum cholesterol level is related with poor prognosis in resectable non-small cell lung cancer.

The cholesterol has been reported to be associated with cancer development. The aim of our study was to investigate the serum cholesterol level (TC) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and their association with clinicopathologic parameters and the prognosis. The serum cholesterol levels were evaluated in 259 resected NSCLC patients and were correlated with clinicopathologic variables including age, gender, tumor size, regional lymph node metastasis, disease-free survival time and overall survival time. Preoperative serum TC level was significantly associated with gender (P=0.001), smoking history (P=0.016), tumor differentiation (P=0.027), pT stage (P<0.001) and pN stage (P=0.009). Multivariate analyses indicated that decreased serum TC level was an independent prognostic factor for worse outcome. The hazard ratio was 1.89 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09-3.26) for disease progression and 2.19 (95% CI 1.01-4.74) for death. Based on this finding, the pretreatment serum cholesterol level is a novel independent prognostic biomarker in resectable NSCLC.