Cefalì, Marco Scala, Isabel Pavone, Giuliana Helbling, Daniel Hussung, Saskia Fritsch, Ralph Reiner, Cäcilia Stocker, Soleen Koeberle, Dieter Kissling, Marc Chianca, Vito Del Grande, Filippo De Dosso, Sara Rizzo, Stefania 2023 Background: Malnutrition, loss of weight and of skeletal muscle mass are frequent in pancreatic cancer patients, a majority of which will undergo chemotherapy over the course of their disease. Available data suggest a negative prognostic role of these changes in body composition on disease outcomes; however, it is unclear whether tolerance to chemotherapeutic treatment is similarly and/or negatively affected. We aimed to explore this association by retrospectively assessing changes in body composition and chemotherapy-related toxicity in a cohort of advanced pancreatic cancer patients. Methods: Body composition was evaluated through clinical parameters and through radiological assessment of muscle mass, skeletal muscle area, skeletal muscle index and skeletal muscle density; and an assessment of fat distribution by subcutaneous adipose tissue and visceral adipose tissue. We performed descriptive statistics, pre/post chemotherapy comparisons and uni- and multivariate analyses to assess the relation between changes in body composition and toxicity. Results: Toxicity risk increased with an increase of skeletal muscle index (OR: 1.03) and body mass index (OR: 1.07), whereas it decreased with an increase in skeletal muscle density (OR: 0.96). Multivariate analyses confirmed a reduction in the risk of toxicity only with an increase in skeletal muscle density (OR: 0.96). Conclusions: This study suggests that the retrospective analysis of changes in body composition is unlikely to be useful to predict toxicity to gemcitabine—nab-paclitaxel. application/pdf https://susi.usi.ch/global/documents/331917 https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1331917 https://susi.usi.ch/documents/331917/files/De Dosso_2023_MDPI_Cancers_Is Computed-Tomography-Based.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.3390/cancers15174398 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/ark/12658/srd1331917 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC BY Cancers . - 2023, vol. 15, no. 17, p. 4398 Body composition Pancreatic cancer Toxicity info:eu-repo/classification/udc/61 Is computed-tomography-based body composition a reliable predictor of chemotherapy-related toxicity in pancreatic cancer patients? http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501