Circulating adipokine levels may be associated with endometrial cancer risk, yet few studies have evaluated these markers prospectively. Methods: We conducted a nested case-control study of postmenopausal women in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (n ¼ 78,216), including 167 incident endometrial cancer cases and 327 controls that were matched on age, study center, race, study year of diagnosis, year of blood draw, time of day of blood draw, and menopausal hormone

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... therapy (MHT) use. Adipokine and estradiol levels were categorized into tertiles (T). ORs and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the associations of adiponectin, leptin, and visfatin with endometrial cancer risk were estimated by conditional logistic regression, adjusting for known endometrial cancer risk factors, including body mass index (BMI) and circulating estradiol levels. Results: Adiponectin levels were inversely associated with risk of endometrial cancer [OR T3vsT1 ¼ 0.48; 95% CI, 0.29-0.80); P trend < 0.01], whereas elevated leptin levels showed a positive association [2.77 (1.60-4.79); P trend < 0.01]. These results remained significant after adjustment for estradiol, but not after further adjustment for BMI. When analyses were restricted to non-MHT users, associations of adiponectin and leptin were stronger and remained significant after adjustment for estradiol and BMI [0.25 (0.08-0.75); P trend ¼ 0.01 and 4.72 (1.15-19.38); P trend ¼ 0.02, respectively]. Nonsignificant positive associations were observed for visfatin. Conclusion: Adipokines may influence endometrial cancer risk through pathways other than estrogenmediated cell growth in postmenopausal women not currently on MHT. Impact: Understanding how adipokines influence endometrial cancer risk may help to elucidate biological mechanisms important for the observed obesity-endometrial cancer association. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 22(7); 1304-12. Ó2013 AACR. P-values based on x 2 statistic. b Matching factors. Other matching factors not included in the table were study center, study year of diagnosis, and year of blood draw; the distributions of these variables were not different between cases and controls. c P-value based on Wilcoxon rank sum test for differences in medians.