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Pre-treatment neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio is elevated in epithelial ovarian cancer and predicts survival after treatment

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Abstract

Purpose

Inflammatory cells can both suppress and stimulate tumor growth, and the influence of inflammatory cells on clinical outcome has been the focus of many studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), a measure of the systemic inflammatory response, as an additional discriminative biomarker in epithelial ovarian cancer and to determine whether it predicts survival and recurrence.

Methods

We studied 192 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, 173 with benign ovarian tumors, 229 with benign gynecologic disease, and 405 healthy controls. Serum CA125 levels and leukocyte counts according to subtypes were recorded prior to treatment in all study subjects. In epithelial ovarian cancer, the diagnostic usefulness of NLR, in combination with CA125, was evaluated. The correlation between NLR and overall and disease-free survival was analyzed using both univariate and multivariate analyses adjusting for the known prognostic factors (age, stage, cell type, and grade).

Results

Preoperative NLR in ovarian cancer subjects (mean 6.02) was significantly higher than that in benign ovarian tumor subjects (mean 2.57), benign gynecologic disease subjects (mean 2.55), and healthy controls (mean 1.98) (P < 0.001). The sensitivity and specificity of NLR in detecting ovarian cancer was 66.1% (95% CI, 59.52–72.68%) and 82.7% (95% CI, 79.02–86.38%), respectively (cutoff value: 2.60). In early stage ovarian cancer, CA125 was not elevated in 19 out of 49 patients. Seven (36.8%) of these 19 patients were NLR positive. On Cox multivariate analysis, NLR positive, stage III/IV, and older age were independent poor prognostic factors, and being NLR positive was the most powerful predictive variable (Hazard Ratio = 8.42 [95% CI: 1.09–64.84], P = 0.041).

Conclusions

Our findings provide evidence for the association between NLR and epithelial ovarian cancer. Preoperative NLR, in combination with CA125, may represent a simple and cost-effective method of identifying ovarian cancers, and an elevated NLR may predict an adverse outcome in ovarian cancer.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by National R&D Program for Cancer Control, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (7-2006-0153), CMB-YUHAN research grant of Yonsei University College of Medicine for 2006 (6-2006-0030), and the Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund) (KRF-2006-311-e00339).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Yongdong Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 146-92 Dogok-Dong, Gangnam-Gu, Seoul, 135-720, South Korea

    HanByoul Cho, Jae Hoon Kim & Kook Lee

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 134 Sinchon-Dong, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul, 120-752, South Korea

    Hye Won Hur, Sang Wun Kim, Sung Hoon Kim & Young Tae Kim

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  1. HanByoul Cho
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Correspondence to Jae Hoon Kim.

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Cho, H., Hur, H.W., Kim, S.W. et al. Pre-treatment neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio is elevated in epithelial ovarian cancer and predicts survival after treatment. Cancer Immunol Immunother 58, 15–23 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00262-008-0516-3

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