By Michael Casasnovas
TAMPA, Fla -- March 14, 2008 -- The ratio between neutrophils and lymphocytes could help doctors in their prognosis of whether women with ovarian cancer will have a recurrence, according to a presentation here at the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists (SGO) 2008 Annual Meeting on Women's Health.
Researchers conducted this study to evaluate the effectiveness of the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, a measure of the systemic inflammatory response, as an additional discriminative biomarker in epithelial ovarian cancer, and to determine whether it predicts patient survival and disease recurrence.
HanByoul Cho, MD, Clinical Researcher in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Yondong Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea, presented the poster.
Dr. Cho and colleagues examined 192 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, 173 with benign ovarian tumours, 229 with benign gynaecologic disease, and 405 healthy controls. Before treatment, researchers recorded serum cancer antigen 125 (CA125) levels and lymphocyte counts according to subtypes in all study subjects.
The researchers evaluated patients with epithelial ovarian cancer for the diagnostic usefulness of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in combination with CA125, a marker for proliferating. Using both univariate and multivariate analyses, while adjusting for known prognostic factors such as age, stage, cell type, and grade, researchers analysed the correlation between neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, overall, and disease-free survival.
Preoperative mean neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in the ovarian cancer group (6.02) was significantly higher than that in the benign ovarian tumour group (2.57), benign gynaecological disease group (2.55), and healthy control group (1.98, P < .001). The sensitivity of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in detecting ovarian cancer was 66.1% and specificity was 82.7%, Dr. Cho reported.
"Preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, in combination with [CA125 level], may represent a simple and cost-effective method of identifying ovarian cancers, and an elevated neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio may predict an adverse outcome in ovarian cancer," said Dr. Cho.
An elevated ratio was the most powerful predictive variable, increasing the risk of recurrence by 8.42 times (P = .041), he added.
"These findings provide evidence for the association between neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and primary ovarian cancer," he concluded.
[Presentation title: Diagnostic and Prognostic Significance of Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio Along With CA125 in Ovarian Cancer. Abstract 70]
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