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Meta-Analysis
. 2017 Nov;96(45):e8101.
doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000008101.

Prognostic role of pretreatment neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in breast cancer patients: A meta-analysis

Xu Liu  1 , Jing-Kun Qu, Jia Zhang, Yan Yan, Xi-Xi Zhao, Ji-Zhao Wang, Hang-Ying Qu, Lin Liu, Jian-Sheng Wang, Xiao-Yi Duan
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Prognostic role of pretreatment neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in breast cancer patients: A meta-analysis

Xu Liu et al. Medicine (Baltimore). 2017 Nov.

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: Inflammation and cancer are closely related to each other. As a parameter that can reflect inflammation and host immune reaction, elevated blood neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has been confirmed to be correlated with poor prognosis in a variety of cancers. However, this remains controversial in breast cancer. Thus, we performed this updated meta-analysis to further clarify whether high NLR could be a predictor of survival in breast cancer patients.

Methods: We searched on PubMed Database and Cochrane Library. Overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and cancer-specific survival were used as outcome events, and hazard ratio (HR) was chosen as the parameter to evaluate the correlation.

Result: Eighteen eligible studies were involved in this meta-analysis. The synthesized analysis demonstrated that elevated NLR was associated with poor DFS [HR = 1.72, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 1.30-2.27], OS (HR = 1.87, 95% CI = 1.41-2.48), and cancer-specific survival (HR = 2.09, 95% CI = 1.04-4.21). The correlation was stronger in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) (OS: HR = 2.58, 95% CI = 1.63-4.06; DFS: HR = 3.51, 95% CI = 1.97-6.24).

Conclusion: Higher NLR was correlated to poor prognosis of breast cancer patients. As a clinical parameter that we can easily obtain, NLR might be a potential predictor in patients' survival to assist with physicians' treatment decisions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow graph of searching process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forrest plots of survival: (A) HR for disease-free survival; (B) HR for overall survival.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forrest plots of survival: (A) HR for survival in TNBC; (B) HR for cancer-specific survival.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Begg funnel plot: (A) estimated publication bias in pooled analysis of disease-free survival; (B) estimated publication bias in pooled analysis of overall survival.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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