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Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and histological type might predict clinical responses to eriburin-based treatment in patients with metastatic breast cancer

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Abstract

Background

Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is generally considered to be incurable. Although many options are available for treating MBC, physicians often encounter difficulties in choosing the most appropriate treatment because the MBCs of individual patients respond differently even to the same treatments. Thus, predictive markers for therapeutic efficacy are urgently needed. Neutrophil- and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratios (NLR and PLR, respectively), have been studied and established as prognostic markers for breast cancer patients but whether either or both of these markers are predictive of treatment responses is still unclear. Herein, we investigated predictive markers for eribulin-based treatment responsiveness in patients with MBC, by examining clinicopathological features, including several markers of immunocompetent cells in peripheral blood.

Methods

Clinicopathological features of the 104 patients with metastatic/Stage IV breast cancer given eribulin-based regimens were investigated in relation to clinical responses to eribulin-based treatments and progression-free-survival (PFS).

Results

Special histological types and high NLR at baseline were independently related to poor clinical responses to the treatments (p = 0.023 and 0.039, respectively). The Cox hazard model revealed that patients with oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative tumours and high NLR, monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR) and PLR showed significantly shorter PFS (p = 0.021, 0.005, 0.008 and 0.030, respectively). On multivariate analysis, only ER status and NLR remained independent factors related to PFS (p = 0.011 and 0.003, respectively).

Conclusions

Our data revealed that special histological types and high NLR might be factors related to low responsiveness to eribulin-based regimens in patients with MBC.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely appreciate Dr. Bierta Barfod for her help with the language editing. The research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Breast Oncology, Juntendo University School of Medicine, 2-1-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Mayu Myojin, Yoshiya Horimoto, Mayuko Ito, Yumiko Ishizuka, Ritsuko Sasaki, Toshitaka Uomori, Takanori Himuro, Fumi Murakami, Katsuya Nakai, Kotaro Iijima & Mitsue Saito

  2. Department of Experimental Therapeutics, Exploratory Oncology Research and Clinical Trial Center, National Cancer Center, Tokyo, Japan

    Shigehisa Kitano

Authors
  1. Mayu Myojin
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  2. Yoshiya Horimoto
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Correspondence to Yoshiya Horimoto.

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The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

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This study was carried out with approval from the ethics committee of Juntendo University Hospital (no: 16-096).

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All data were collected after obtaining written informed consent from the patients.

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Myojin, M., Horimoto, Y., Ito, M. et al. Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and histological type might predict clinical responses to eriburin-based treatment in patients with metastatic breast cancer. Breast Cancer 27, 732–738 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12282-020-01069-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12282-020-01069-0

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