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Review
. 2020 Apr 13;12(4):958.
doi: 10.3390/cancers12040958.

Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio as Prognostic and Predictive Factor in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review

Iléana Corbeau  1   2 , William Jacot  1   2 , Séverine Guiu  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio as Prognostic and Predictive Factor in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review

Iléana Corbeau et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Inflammatory blood markers (IBM), such as the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), have emerged as potential prognostic factors in various cancers, including breast cancer (BC), potentially allowing an easy, minimally invasive evaluation of a given cancer's prognosis and treatment outcome. We report here a systematic overview of the published data evaluating NLR as a prognostic factor or predictive factor for pathological complete response (PCR) and toxicity in early and advanced BC. A total of 45 articles were identified. NLR was found to be an independent prognostic factor for survival in most of the adjuvant treatment studies. However, no significant correlation was found between survival and NLR for early BC patients receiving neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) and advanced BC patients. Most studies failed to find a significant correlation between NLR and PCR after NACT. Finally, some data showed that IBM could be predictive of chemotherapy-related toxicity.

Keywords: breast cancer; inflammatory blood markers; neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio; pathological complete response; predictive factor; prognostic factor; toxicity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of the study selection.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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