title: Pretreatment neutrophil-lymphocyte count ratio may associate with gastric cancer presence.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Inflammation plays a pivotal role in cancer development and progression. Neutrophil-lymphocyte count ratio (NLR) is an indicator of systemic inflammatory response which is supposedly associated with gastric cancer (GC) development and progression. Since this parameter can be easily obtained from routine blood examination, it will be a great economic relief to gastric patients if we can bring it into clinical application.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The current study aims to evaluate the pretreatment NLR in gastric cancer patients through retrospectively reviewing the medical records.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 327 patients hospitalized on a tertiary care hospital were retrospectively investigated and divided into two groups. Gastric cancer group were composed of patients with newly diagnosed, pathologically confirmed GC and the control group were patients with gastric polyp or benign gastric stromal tumor. The value of NLR in the presence and stage of gastric cancer was investigated in the entire gastric cancer group.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our study showed levels of NLR were significantly higher in gastric cancer cohort (2.17 (1.63-3.09) versus 1.62 (0.85-2.32), p< 0.001). After all the known confounders were excluded, NLR was an independent predicator of GC (OR = 1.446, 95%CI (1.121-1.866), and P= 0.005). Area under ROC curve (AUC) of NLR was 0.694. In addition, the results of Spearman's correlation showed NLR may have a positive correlation with size of tumor, N-stage, distant metastasis, and overall stage (r = 0.256, 0.256, 0.161 and 0.171, resp., all p < 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The current study demonstrated that pre-treatment NLR may be a useful biomarker in the health care of gastric cancer patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Laboratory, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
authors.forename: Yuanyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Laboratory, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
authors.forename: Huan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Laboratory, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
authors.forename: Hongmin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Laboratory, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
authors.forename: Siyi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Laboratory, Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
authors.forename: Taiqing
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zheng
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D008214:Lymphocytes; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D009504:Neutrophils; D011379:Prognosis; D012372:ROC Curve; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000097:blood* / Q000175:diagnosis*
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor
keywords: Gastric cancer; inflammation biomarker; neutrophil lymphocyte ratio; retrospective study; routine blood examination