Insulin like growth factor 1 and childhood cancer risk

Background/Aim: Overexpression of growth factors and/or their receptors is a common event in malignancy and provides the underlying mechanisms for one of the hallmarks of cancer, namely uncontrolled proliferation. In recent years, evidence has been mounting that IGF-1 may be involved in pathogenesis and progression of different human cancers such as colon, breast, prostate and lung. However, only few studies investigated the association between IGF-1 levels and childhood cancer risk. We aimed to compare IGF-1 serum level in children with de novo malignancies to healthy children and to assess its relationship with cancer type, stage, metastasis and different disease characteristics.Subjects and methods: The study was carried out on 100 children; 50 children with de novo malignancies and 50 healthy children of matched age and sex as a control group. All patients were subjected to routine work up for their cancers according to our local standards. Estimation of serum level of IGF-1 was done in both groups by ELISA.Results: Our results showed that children with cancer had significantly higher levels of IGF-1 than healthy controls of same age and sex. No association was found between IGF-1 and tumor type, stage, metastasis and other disease characteristics.Conclusions: IGF-I serum level is an important indicator of risk for the most prevalent forms of childhood cancer and might be used to identify children at the highest risk for these cancers and, therefore, who might benefit most from preventive strategies. Given the small number of children in our study, larger studies are needed to confirm these results.Kew words: IGF-1; childhood cancer; cancer risk; cancer prevention.