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Objectives: Inflammatory processes may influence the risk of epithelial ovarian cancer, but available epidemiological evidence is limited and indirect. Circulating C-reactive protein (CRP), a sensitive marker of inflammation, may serve as a direct biological marker of an underlying association., Methods: The association between ovarian cancer risk and pre-diagnostic circulating CRP was tested in a case-control study nested within three prospective cohorts from Sweden, USA, and Italy. The study included 237 cases and 427 individually matched controls. CRP was measured in stored blood samples by high-sensitivity immunoturbidimetric assay. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated by conditional logistic regression., Results: Overall, CRP was not related to risk of ovarian cancer. However, a marked increase in risk was observed for CRP concentrations >10 mg/l: OR (95% CI) 4.4 (1.8-10.9), which remained significant after limiting analyses to cases diagnosed more than two or five years after blood donation (OR 3.0 (1.2-8.0) and 3.6 (1.0-13.2), respectively). Risk of mucinous tumors increased with high CRP, but the number of cases in this analysis was small., Conclusion: Study results offer additional support to the concept that chronic inflammation plays a role in epithelial ovarian cancer.

Objective: To investigate the association of prediagnostic circulating levels of C-peptide, as a marker of pancreatic insulin secretion, and IGF binding proteins -1 and -2, as indicators of the biologically active IGF-I concentration, with risk of developing ovarian cancer., Methods: The study was nested within three prospective cohorts in New York (USA), Umeå (Sweden) and Milan (Italy). Case subjects were 132 women with primary invasive epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosed at least one year after blood donation. For each case, two control subjects were selected, matching the case subject on cohort, menopausal status, age and date of recruitment (n = 263). Only women who did not use exogenous hormones at blood donation were included in the study., Results: Odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals for risk of developing ovarian cancer over quartiles of peptides concentrations after adjustment for BMI and fasting were: 1.00, 0.66 (0.35-1.23), 0.96 (0.51-1.82) and 0.89 (0.44-1.81) for C-peptide; 1.00, 1.10 (0.58-2.09), 1.07 (0.55-2.04) and 0.79 (0.38-1.62) for IGFBP-1; and 1.00, 1.01 (0.54-1.89), 0.98 (0.51-1.88) and 0.87 (0.45-1.68) for IGFBP-2. In women who had ovarian cancer diagnosis before age 55 the ORs for the top tertiles of IGFBP-1 and IGFBP-2 were 0.51 (0.18-1.49) and 0.53 (0.18-1.54), respectively., Conclusions: This study does not support an independent direct etiological role of C-peptide in ovarian cancer pathogenesis, but suggests a possible protective effect of circulating IGFBP-1 and -2 in women who develop ovarian cancer before age 55.