Introduction
Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a major health burden with high mortality throughout the world. Globally, there are 1.8 million cases and 880,792 deaths from CRC in 2018 [
1]. With the changes in lifestyle such as the lack of physical activity, and the increasing prevalence of obesity in recent decades, the incidence of CRC in China has been raised [
2]. It is well known that colorectal polyp is a key step in CRC development. Different polyp subtypes lead to cancer development through distinct neoplasia pathways, in which the adenoma-carcinoma pathway contributes up to 60–70% of all CRC [
3]. A number of epidemiological studies have reported an association between the risk for CRC and obesity [
4,
5]. Visceral obesity was reported as a risk factor for colorectal adenoma [
6]. However, whether adipose tissue is increasing from adenoma to carcinoma is still unclear.
Human white adipose tissue is a prominent energy reservoir and can be categorized into subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) [
7]. Recent studies have shown that the metabolic characteristics and embryonic origin of SAT and VAT are different [
7‐
9]. Increased VAT is a risk factor for various tumors, including CRC [
10,
11]. VAT is also associated with a higher incidence of colorectal adenoma in a dose-dependent manner [
12]. On the other hand, the increase of SAT is not associated with CRC and is even negatively associated with CRC in African Americans [
13]. In addition, the prognostic value of SAT and VAT is also different in various cancers [
14,
15]. Intramuscular adipose tissue (IMAT) is a measure of adipose tissue infiltration in skeletal muscle fibers [
16]. IMAT highly correlates with muscle density and can lead to a higher risk of adverse health outcomes [
17,
18]. However, the role of IMAT in the development of CRC is unclear.
Measurement of waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) are two conventional methods to determine the abdominal fat and muscle composition. However, such methods cannot accurately distinguish SAT and VAT. In recent years, with the application of imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) scans, abdominal fat and muscle composition can be accurately segmented to be SAT and VAT as well as IMAT and skeletal muscle (SM) [
19,
20]. The third lumbar vertebra (L3) is a common reference point for the estimation of abdominal fat and muscle composition [
21,
22]. With its power to use neural networks and convolutional layers to learn the hierarchy of features from a large amount of given data, deep learning systems can be trained to analyze abdominal fat and muscle composition [
23,
24]. In a previous study, we have developed a V-Net-Based segmentation deep learning system to segment skeletal muscle and adipose tissues quickly and accurately [
15]. It provides a useful method for large-scale calculation of human abdominal fat and muscle composition (SM, SAT, VAT, and IMAT).
Cancer cachexia is a common phenomenon of advanced tumors, which is mainly characterized by loss of skeletal muscle and adipose tissues [
25]. A large number of studies have shown that skeletal muscle atrophy is an independent prognostic factor of cancer patients with cachexia [
26‐
28]. However, prognostic value of adipose tissue loss in patients with cancer cachexia is still controversial [
15,
29,
30]. Given CRC often occurs in obese patients, it is not clear whether CRC patients with cachexia would experience adipose tissue loss as other cancer patients do.
In this study, we compared the abdominal fat and muscle composition differences in different stages of colorectal cancer (patients with and without colorectal polyp, CRC patients with and without cachexia), so as to provide evidence for the clinical prevention and treatment of CRC.
Discussion
In this study, by comparing the abdominal fat and muscle composition in patients with and without colorectal polyp, CRC patients with and without cachexia, we found significant differences of abdominal fat and muscle composition in different stages of CRC. Most importantly, VAT area was the largest in patients with colorectal polyp compared to other groups. In CRC patients with cachexia, the areas of SAT, VAT, SM, as well as IMAT were all found decreased significantly compared to other groups. This is the first comprehensive study focused on the of abdominal fat and muscle composition difference during the different stages of CRC progression from normal mucosa to polyp to cancer and cachexia.
Although the association between VAT and CRC was controversial, its association with colorectal polyp was quite well established [
31,
32]. Various studies have demonstrated that increase in VAT area was an independent risk factor for colorectal polyp [
33]. In this study, significant increase of VAT area was found in the patients with polyp compared with the healthy controls both in male and in female. Further research showed that the increase of VAT in female was higher than that in male, suggesting that the increase of VAT was more likely to promote the occurrence of adenoma in female patients. No significant increase of SAT area was observed in patients with polyp in both genders, which was consistent with the previous study [
34]. These results suggested that the growth of VAT but not SAT was a risk factor for colorectal polyp, and female patients should pay more attention to visceral obesity.
VAT related inflammation was supposed to promote CRC initiation and progression [
10]. However, Akay et al. reported that areas of VAT and SAT decreased in CRC patients compared with the healthy controls [
35]. In this study, we found that the VAT area in CRC patients without cachexia was slightly higher than that of healthy controls, while slightly lower than that of patients with colorectal polyp. This suggested that the VAT was the largest area in patients with colorectal polyp, and VAT began to decrease when cancer occurs. We also found that the SAT area in CRC patient without cachexia was significantly lower than patients with polyp in male, while slightly higher than patients with polyp in female. These results suggests that SAT and VAT may have different roles during the development of CRC.
According to the consensus of cancer cachexia proposed in 2011, patients with cancer cachexia were characterized by muscle loss with or without adipose tissue loss [
25]. However, a large number of studies have found that most of cancer patients with cachexia such as gastric cancer and pancreatic cancer were associated with adipose tissue loss [
36]. As commonly known, obese patients are more likely to suffer from CRC. When cancer cachexia develops, it is unclear whether adipose tissue will also be significantly decreased on the basis of obesity. In this study, we found both areas of SAT and VAT in patients with cachexia were significantly lower than those of normal patents, polyp patients, and non-cachexia patients. This suggested adipose tissue loss was one of the important characteristics of CRC patients with cachexia.
Ebadi et al. reported that loss of VAT precedes SAT in advanced colorectal and cholangiocarcinoma cancer patients [
37]. However, SAT, but not VAT, began to lose in male patients without cachexia in this study, while the loss degree of VAT is greater than that of SAT. Although the underlying mechanism is still not very clear, VAT contains more immune cells than SAT, which may promote lipolysis [
8]. More attention should be paid to the SAT loss in the early stage of CRC and VAT loss in the late stage of CRC.
As one of the most important characteristics of cancer cachexia, the study of SM atrophy and its mechanism was more comprehensive than that of adipose tissue loss [
38]. In this study, we compared the difference of SM area in different stages of CRC. There was no significant change of SM area among the healthy controls, polyp group, and cancer group, suggesting that SM atrophy did not exist until the early stage of CRC. SM area began to decrease in patient with cachexia, demonstrating that adipose tissue loss precedes muscle loss in CRC patient. It was also suggested that cancer cachexia might be caused by the interaction of muscle and adipose tissue [
39].
To our knowledge, this is the first analysis to investigate the IMAT area in different stages of CRC. Interestingly, we found that the IMAT area was smaller in cachexia patients than that in healthy controls and polyp patient, while was similar with CRC patient without cachexia. Nevertheless, as IMAT is a novel topic in adipose tissue depot, more data is needed to validate our findings.
Our study has several limitations. First, this is a retrospective cross-sectional study and has a relatively small cachexia sample size. Second, IMAT area varies greatly among different groups, the final difference in different groups still need to be determined by further research. Thirdly, this study mainly includes two major confounding factors: age and gender. It is unclear whether there are other factors that affect the results. Despite these limitations, we still believe that subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue play different roles in the different stages of CRC development.
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