Decreased Serum Adiponectin Level Affected Clinical Pathological Characteristics of Patients with Gastric Cancer

Background: Adiponectin (APN), which was secreted from adipose tissue, was extensively investigated in various diseases such as obesity as well as obesity-related cancers. Method: Here, we investigated serum adiponectin level in gastric cancer (GC) patients and healthy control subjects using a well-established N-succinimidyl 4-(maleimidomethyl) cyclohexanecarboxylate (SMCC) modified protein biochip. Results: We found that serum adiponectin level significantly decreased in the patients with GC when compared with the controls (p<0.01). Women had higher adiponectin level than men in the controls (p=0.024), but no gender difference occurred in the GC patients (p>0.05). Correlation analysis between serum adiponectin expression and clinicopathological characteristics in the GC patients indicated that serum adiponectin level was obviously correlated with tumor location (p=0.008), differentiated degree (p=0.011) and histologic type (p=0.006). Conclusion: Our results revealed that serum adiponectin might potentially reflect location, histogenesis and differentiation of GC. The biochip immunoassay would act as one substitute of conventional clinical assays for measuring serum adiponectin in GC.