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. 2020 May 13;9(1):1761176.
doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2020.1761176.

Blood eosinophilic relative count is prognostic for breast cancer and associated with the presence of tumor at diagnosis and at time of relapse

Concetta Elisa Onesti  1   2 , Claire Josse  1   2 , Delphine Boulet  2 , Jérôme Thiry  2 , Barbara Beaumecker  3 , Vincent Bours  2   4 , Guy Jerusalem  1   3
Affiliations

Blood eosinophilic relative count is prognostic for breast cancer and associated with the presence of tumor at diagnosis and at time of relapse

Concetta Elisa Onesti et al. Oncoimmunology. .

Abstract

Background: Cancer outcome is associated with circulating immune cells, including eosinophils. Here we analyze the relative eosinophil count (REC) in different breast cancer subtypes.

Methods: Stage I-III breast cancer patients were included in the study and classified as REC-high vs low (cutoff 1.5%) or relative lymphocyte count (RLC)-high vs low (cutoff 17.5%). The co-primary endpoints were the breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) or the time to treatment failure (TTF) in the REC groups.

Results: Overall 930 patients were included in the study. We observed a benefit for REC-high vs REC-low in TTF (HR 0.610, 95% CI 0.458-0.812), and in BCSS (HR 0.632, 95% CI 0.433-0.923). Similarly, we observed a better TTF (HR 0.421, 95% CI 0.262-0.677) and BCSS (HR 0.350, 95% CI 0.200-0.614) in RLC-high vs low. A lower relapse rate was observed in the REC-high vs REC-low group (17.1% vs 24.7%, p = 0.005), not confirmed in the multivariate analysis. A lower median REC at baseline and at relapse was observed compared to REC after surgery and during cancer-free follow-up (p < .0001).

Conclusions: REC could be a new promising, affordable and accessible predictive and prognostic biomarker in all breast cancer subtypes.

Keywords: breast cancer; eosinophil; immune biomarker; immune system; lymphocyte.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
TTF and BCSS according to baseline REC, RLC and ELP.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Subgroup analysis for TTF and BCSS according to baseline REC.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Scatter dot plot of REC at different timepoints.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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