Biomedical Research

This study was aimed to investigate the prognostic significance of Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR) for patients with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC) by the analytic approach of meta-analysis. We searched databases of PubMed, Emabse and Web of Science and included 6 studies with 3,469 patients in the meta-analysis. All included studies were from China. The association between NLR and four end-points events, Overall Survival (OS), Progression-Free Survival (PFS), Disease-Specific Survival (DSS) and Distant Metastasis-Free Survival (DMFS) was evaluated by using STATA version 12.0. Elevated NLR was associated with poor OS (HR=1.73, 95% CI: 1.37-2.13, p<0.001), PFS (Hazard Ratio (HR) =1.57, 95% CI: 1.19-2.09, p=0.002), DSS (HR=1.41, 95% CI: 1.19-1.66, p<0.001) and DMFS (HR=1.91 with 95% CI: 1.35-2.71, p<0.001). Furthermore, there was no significant heterogeneity and publication bias for all analyses in our study, indicating the robustness and credibility of this metaanalysis. Our study showed that elevated NLR was a significant biomarker for poor OS, PFS, DSS and DMFS in NPC. NLR was a potential valuable marker for NPC treatment.

Author(s): Bin Yu, Zhonghua Li, Qingping Zheng, Zhanxiong Luo, Jing Li, Yuanyuan Zhou, Leili Wang, Chanjuan He, Fengrong Shi, Rensheng Wang
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