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Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and monocyte-to-eosinophil ratio as prognostic indicators for advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma

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Abstract

Objective

To determine the predictive value of the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), neutrophil-to-eosinophil ratio (NER), lymphocyte-to-eosinophil ratio (LER), monocyte-to-eosinophil ratio (MER), systemic inflammatory response index (SIRI), and ratio of inflammatory cells before and after treatment for predicting survival in advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and to provide a reference for treatment.

Methods

A retrospective review of 70 patients was performed. Serological indexes were obtained by drawing blood before and after systemic therapy. The cutoff values of these indexes were determined by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The prognostic value of the indexes for overall survival (OS) and distant metastasis free survival (DMFS) was evaluated.

Results

Survival analysis showed that a smaller pretreatment LMR value was associated with poor OS; larger pretreatment NER, LER, MER, and SIRI values were associated with poor OS; a smaller posttreatment LMR value was associated with poor OS; larger posttreatment NLR, NER, MER, and SIRI values were associated with poor OS; a smaller pretreatment LMR value was associated with poor DMFS; larger pretreatment NLR, NER, LER, and MER values were associated with poor DMFS; and larger posttreatment NLR, NER, LER, and MER values were associated with poor DMFS. Furthermore, a larger neutrophil after treatment-to-neutrophil before treatment ratio was associated with poor OS and DMFS. Logistic regression analysis showed that pretreatment MER and posttreatment NLR were independent predictors of OS in patients with advanced NPC; moreover, pretreatment and posttreatment MER and NLR were independent prognostic factors for DMFS in patients with advanced NPC.

Conclusions

The NLR, NER and MER can be used to predict survival in advanced NPC patients. Eosinophils might be one of the factors for the good prognosis of NPC patients. In addition, an increased number of neutrophils after treatment may indicate a favorable prognosis.

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Availability of data and materials

All data will be made available by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundations of Hunan province, China [2021JJ40913].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China

    Maoyu Ye, Aijie Huang, Bo Yuan, Guolin Tan, Jingang Ai & Honghui Liu

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  1. Maoyu Ye
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  3. Bo Yuan
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Contributions

MY: data acquisition, interpretation, analysis, drafting; AH: data acquisition, interpretation; BY: data acquisition, interpretation; GT: interpretation, revisions; JA: interpretation, revisions; HL: conception, interpretation, revisions.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Honghui Liu.

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The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of The Third Xiangya Hospital (No: 21182) and performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

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Ye, M., Huang, A., Yuan, B. et al. Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and monocyte-to-eosinophil ratio as prognostic indicators for advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 281, 1971–1989 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-024-08474-7

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