Trabecular Bone Score is inversely associated with C-reactive protein levels in women with breast cancer

Objective: To investigate the association of body composition and biochemical and functional variables with bone microarchitecture in women with breast can-cer. Methods: Observational cross-sectional study carried out with women diag-nosed with Luminal-subtype breast cancer, aged between 40 and 80 years, from January 2021 to January 2022. Anthropometric, biochemical, muscle strength, and physical performance variables were obtained. Body composition and bone mineral density (BMD) were analyzed by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and bone microarchitecture by Trabecular Bone Score (TBS). We applied multi-variate linear regression analysis with adjusted models to verify the influence of independent variables on bone microarchitecture (dependent variable). The sig-nificance level adopted was 5% for all tests. Results: Forty-three women with a mean age of 57.9 ± 11.2 years were evaluated. There was a predominance of women with diagnosis time <6 months (83.7%), tumor stage II (48.8%), without previous treatment (37.2%), and post-menopausal (81.4%). There was a signifi-cant difference between mean TBS values according to age group (p= 0.003), menopausal status (p= 0.043), physical performance (p= 0.033), and BMD (p= 0.009). A moderate and inverse correlation was observed between TBS and se-rum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) (p= 0.006). After multivariate linear regres-sion analysis, serum CRP remained associated with TBS (p= 0.001). Conclusion: High serum CRP levels were associated with worse bone microarchitecture in women with breast cancer.