HbA1c in patients with intracranial meningiomas WHO grades I and II: A preliminary study

Abstract

Meningiomas are among the most common primary brain tumors. There is a growing need for novel ways of differentiating between benign (World Health Organization [WHO] grade I) and atypical (WHO grade II) meningiomas as well as for novel markers of the tumor's future behavior. A difference between glucose metabolism in atypical and benign meningiomas is well known. However, a significant correlation between the systemic metabolic status of the patient and the meningioma WHO grade has not yet been established. Our aim was to compare the WHO grades of intracranial meningiomas with the patient's HbA1c levels as a more reliable marker of the chronic systemic metabolic status than the fasting blood glucose value, which is usually looked at. We retrospectively analyzed 15 patients and compared their meningioma WHO grade with their preoperative HbA1c values. Our results show that patients with benign intracranial meningiomas have significantly lower HbA1c value. Conversely, patients with atypical intracranial meningiomas have higher HbA1c values. Furthermore, we showed that the proliferation factor Ki67 was statistically strongly correlated with the HbA1c value (p < .001. These results imply a possible positive correlation between meningioma cell proliferation and the chronic systemic glycemia. Further research in this area could not only lead to better understanding of meningiomas but could have significant clinical application.

Chronic hyperglycemia and intracranial meningiomas

“…2 A). Contrary to our preliminary research [ 43 ], in the current study there was no significant correlation between the patients’ HbA1c and Ki67 values ( P = 0.8815, ρ(rho)=-0.018) (Fig. 2 B).…”

The vicious interplay between disrupted sleep and malignant brain tumors: a narrative review

“…These alterations to various aspects of metabolic syndrome have on the other hand been consistently connected to a worse prognosis in patients with cancer ( 57 ), as well as with malignant brain tumors ( 58 , 59 ). Our own preliminary research on patients with meningiomas ( 60 ) and patients with glioblastomas ( 61 ) showed that at least some patients with primary intracranial malignancies could actually have significantly disrupted chronic blood glucose levels. Even on the cellular level, it has been shown that genes coding for various glucose transporters (GLUT1 for example) are differently expressed in the sleeping brain than in the awake one ( 46 ).…”