ArticleBMC medicine2022
Pan-cancer analysis of pre-diagnostic blood metabolite concentrations in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.
Article in BMC medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Plasma metabolomic signatures of all and cause-specific cancers: a multi-platform population-based study.Metabolomics : Official journal of the Metabolomic Society · 2026Article
- Role of TRAIL in mediating the effect of lipidome on breast cancer: a Mendelian randomization study.Translational cancer research · 2026Article
- Evaluating the potential causal relationship between carnitine-related metabolites and breast cancer: a Mendelian randomization and transcriptomic analysis.Archives of medical science : AMS · 2026Article
- The intricate interplay of microbial metabolomics and carcinogenesis: a spotlight on mechanistic pathways, clinical implications and methodological challenges.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Causal associations between circulating metabolites and risk of neuroblastoma: a bidirectional Mendelian randomization study.Discover oncology · 2025Article
- Prospective study of circulating metabolomic profiles and breast cancer incidence among predominantly premenopausal women.British journal of cancer · 2025Observational
- Associations between prediagnostic plasma metabolites and biliary tract cancer risk in the prospective UK Biobank cohort.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Unlocking the Potential of Liquid Biopsy: A Paradigm Shift in Endometrial Cancer Care.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Blood metabolites and gastric cancer risk: A bidirectional 2-sample Mendelian randomization study.Medicine · 2025Article
- Integrating anamnestic and lifestyle data with sphingolipid levels for risk-based prostate cancer screening.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Observational
- Metabolic profile of biodiverse diets in a healthy European cohort.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2025Article
- Identifying Metabolomic Mediators of the Physical Activity and Colorectal Cancer Relationship.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2025Article
- Article
- Role of Cardiovascular Health in the Bidirectional Progression Trajectories Between Cardiovascular Disease, Type 2 Diabetes, and Cancer.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2025Article
- Prostate cancer risk biomarkers from large cohort and prospective metabolomics studies: A systematic review.Translational oncology · 2025Review
- Causal Relationship Between Metabolic Traits and Risk of NSCLC: A Two-Sample Mendelian Randomization Analysis.Journal of Cancer · 2025Article
- Inflammation mediates the effect of histidine on a lower risk of colorectal cancer.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
47 authors at 20 institutions in 11 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEpidemiological studies of associations between metabolites and cancer risk have typically focused on specific cancer types separately. Here, we designed a multivariate pan-cancer analysis to identify metabolites potentially associated with multiple cancer types, while also allowing the investigation of cancer type-specific associations.
methodsWe analysed targeted metabolomics data available for 5828 matched case-control pairs from cancer-specific case-control studies on breast, colorectal, endometrial, gallbladder, kidney, localized and advanced prostate cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma nested within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort. From pre-diagnostic blood levels of an initial set of 117 metabolites, 33 cluster representatives of strongly correlated metabolites and 17 single metabolites were derived by hierarchical clustering. The mutually adjusted associations of the resulting 50 metabolites with cancer risk were examined in penalized conditional logistic regression models adjusted for body mass index, using the data-shared lasso penalty.
resultsOut of the 50 studied metabolites, (i) six were inversely associated with the risk of most cancer types: glutamine, butyrylcarnitine, lysophosphatidylcholine a C18:2, and three clusters of phosphatidylcholines (PCs); (ii) three were positively associated with most cancer types: proline, decanoylcarnitine, and one cluster of PCs; and (iii) 10 were specifically associated with particular cancer types, including histidine that was inversely associated with colorectal cancer risk and one cluster of sphingomyelins that was inversely associated with risk of hepatocellular carcinoma and positively with endometrial cancer risk.
conclusionsThese results could provide novel insights for the identification of pathways for cancer development, in particular those shared across different cancer types.
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