Assessment of plasma resolvin levels in women with breast cancer and their associations with disease presentation and immunohistochemical characteristics

Resolvins, which are divided into series D (RvD) and E (RvE), originate from omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA and were recently found to be involved in the modulation of inflammation in some tumors, including breast cancer (BC). We aimed to assess the resolvin profiles (RvD1, RvD2, RvD3 and RvE1) in the plasma of BC patients compared with those of controls and to determine differences in their concentrations according to BC presentation and immunohistochemical characteristics. We considered BC patients (sporadic, familiar and BRCA1/2-mutated forms) naïve to any anticancer treatment and controls affected by nonmalignant breast disease. According to the BC immunohistochemical characteristics, we identified the luminal-A, luminal-B, HER2 + and triple-negative subtypes. The levels of RvD1, RvD2, RvD3 and RvE1 in the plasma of all the participants were measured via ELISA kits. We enrolled 64 women, 53 with BC (age 51 ± 10 y) and 11 controls (age 49 ± 7 y). Twenty-seven patients presented with sporadic BC, 16 with a positive history of BC (familiar), and 10 with BRCA 1/2 gene mutations. Compared with control patients, BC patients presented higher levels of RvD1 (p = 0.015), and no differences were detected for RvD2, 3 or RvE1. In BC, all resolvin levels were positively correlated with each other (p