Affiliations: [a] Department of Clinical Laboratory, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China | [b] Department of Clinical Laboratory, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Hongmin Jiang, Department of Clinical Laboratory, the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Renmin Middle Road, Changsha, Hunan, China. Fax: +86 0731 85292145; E-mail:1026622941@qq.com
Abstract: BACKGROUND:
Inflammation plays a pivotal role in cancer development and progression.
Neutrophil-lymphocyte count ratio (NLR) is an indicator of systemic
inflammatory response which is supposedly associated with gastric cancer (GC)
development and progression. Since this parameter can be easily obtained
from routine blood examination, it will be a great economic relief to
gastric patients if we can bring it into clinical application. OBJECTIVE:
The current study aims to evaluate the pretreatment NLR in gastric cancer
patients through retrospectively reviewing the medical records. METHODS:
A total of 327 patients hospitalized on a tertiary care hospital were
retrospectively investigated and divided into two groups.
Gastric cancer group were composed
of patients with newly diagnosed,
pathologically confirmed GC and the control group were patients with gastric
polyp or benign gastric stromal tumor. The value of NLR in the presence and
stage of gastric cancer
was investigated in
the entire gastric
cancer group. RESULTS:
Our study showed levels of NLR were significantly higher in gastric cancer
cohort (2.17 (1.63-3.09) versus 1.62 (0.85-2.32), p< 0.001). After
all the known confounders were excluded,
NLR was an independent predicator of GC
(OR = 1.446, 95%CI (1.121-1.866), and P= 0.005). Area under ROC curve (AUC)
of NLR was 0.694. In addition, the results of Spearman's correlation showed
NLR may have a positive correlation with size of tumor, N-stage, distant
metastasis, and overall stage (r = 0.256, 0.256, 0.161 and 0.171, resp., all p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS:
The current study demonstrated that pre-treatment NLR may be a useful
biomarker in the health care of gastric cancer patients.
