Prognostic significance of pretreatment inflammatory biomarkers in non-metastatic breast cancer

Abstract

Background: Recently, peripheral blood inflammatory biomarkers such as neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) have been identified for their prognostic role in many types of cancers. Elevated NLR was associated with poor prognosis & increased mortality rates. This study assessed the predictive value of pretreatment NLR in non-metastatic breast cancer.Objective: To assess the role of pretreatment NLR in non-metastatic breast cancer and their effect on prognosis in terms of 5 years disease-free survival and overall survival.Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted in Suez Canal University Hospitals in Ismailia, Egypt. 105 patients with pathologically proven breast cancer were recruited from January 2015 to December 2016. Patients & tumor characteristics were collected from medical records. Five-year overall survival & disease-free survival were analyzed.Results: Mean patients’ ages were 47.82 ± 11.65. The age ranges were between 25 & 78 years. There was no statistical significance between patients with low & high pretreatment NLR in terms of patients’ characteristics & tumor variables. With the ROC curve, the cut-off points for NLR were 1.65 & 1.55 for DFS and OS, respectively. In terms of patients’ DFS & OS, no statistically significant difference was found between non-metastatic breast cancer patients with low & high NLR (plog­-rank = .357 and .236, respectively). No statistically significant difference was found between patients with low & high pretreatment NLR in the period of five years OS & DFS.Conclusions: Pretreatment NLR is an inflammatory biomarker that might affect patient prognosis and survival. Further research is required to confirm the prognostic significance.