The diagnostic and prognostic value of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio on gastric cancer patients

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) is the remaining concern of cancer-associated health burden. Valuable predictive and prognostic indicators support the early diagnosis and improve outcome. Immune escape and inflammation are important cancer hallmarks. The prognostic and diagnostic value of platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was reported in some cancers. But these cheap and convenient indexes are far from clinical use. Thus, investigation the alteration of those index on GC is needed to impose the use of those indexes in clinic. The study recruited seventy-seven hospitalized patients newly diagnosed with GC and 90 healthy individuals. The clinical and preclinical data of participants were collected from Hospital Information Management system. This study were approved by the Ethical Committee, Vietnam Military Medical University. The data were analyzed on STATA version 14.0 and GraphPad Prism 8.0. The alteration of immunological system was reported by significantly higher white blood cell count, neutrophils, platelets, PLR, and NLR as well as decreased lymphocytes on GC, compared to healthy individuals. Those indexes were elevated on advanced stage GC, compared to early stage GC. Our receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed the significant specificity and sensitivity of PLR (cutoff 135.0) and NLR (cutoff 2.0) on GC diagnosis with respective area under receiver operating characteristic curve of 84.74% and 85.17%, P < .0001. Besides, our results reported the tendency of increased PLR and NLR and short time from clinical signs to being diagnosed. PLR and NLR have significant specificity and sensitivity in diagnosis and prognosis of GC.