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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 13|pp 17638—17654

Pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio predicts the benefit of gastric cancer patients with systemic therapy

Songtao Du1,2,3,4, Zhenhao Fang1,2, Lin Ye2,4, Huiyan Sun2,4, Guangtong Deng2,4, Wei Wu1,2, Furong Zeng1,2,4
  • 1Department of Oncology and Geratic Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
  • 2National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
  • 3Department of Colorectal Surgical Oncology, Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital, Harbin, China
  • 4Department of Dermatology, Hunan Engineering Research Center of Skin Health and Disease, Hunan Key Laboratory of Skin Cancer and Psoriasis, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China
* Equal contribution
Received: January 29, 2021Accepted: June 18, 2021Published: July 10, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203256

Copyright: © 2021 Du et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has been reported to be associated with the prognosis of inoperable gastric cancer patients with systemic therapy. However, no consensus on the association has been reached. In this study, we mainly evaluated whether pretreatment NLR predicted the benefit of inoperable gastric cancer patients with systemic therapy, including chemotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library databases were systematically searched from inception up to September 16th, 2020. A total of 36 studies including 8614 patients were involved in the meta-analysis. Pooled data revealed that high pretreatment NLR was significantly associated with poor outcomes of OS (HR = 1.78, 95% CI = [1.59, 1.99]) and PFS (HR = 1.63, 95% CI = [1.39, 1.91]) in gastric cancer. Subgroup analyses stratified by country, study type, case load, analysis of HR, cutoff of pretreatment NLR, or treatment types arrived at the same conclusion. Pooled data based on different effect models and sensitivity analyses did not change the conclusion. Overall, high pretreatment NLR predicts the poor prognosis of inoperable gastric cancer patients with systemic therapy. Measurement of pretreatment NLR will assist clinicians with patient counseling and clinical treatment guiding accordingly.