Cho HB et al. - In a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) as an additional discriminative biomarker in epithelial ovarian cancer and to determine whether it predicts survival and recurrence, it was found that there is evidence for the association between NLR and epithelial ovarian cancer. Preoperative NLR, in combination with CA125, may represent a simple and cost-effective method of identifying ovarian cancers, and an elevated NLR may predict an adverse outcome in ovarian cancer Methods
192 pts with epithelial ovarian cancer were studied, 173 with benign ovarian tumors, 229 with benign gynecologic disease, and 405 healthy controls
Serum CA125 levels and leukocyte counts according to subtypes were recorded prior to treatment in all study subjects
In epithelial ovarian cancer, the diagnostic usefulness of NLR, in combination with CA125, was evaluated
The correlation between NLR and overall and disease-free survival was analyzed using both univariate and multivariate analyses adjusting for the known prognostic factors
Results
Preoperative NLR in ovarian cancer subjects was significantly higher than that in benign ovarian tumor subjects, benign gynecologic disease subjects, and healthy controls
Sensitivity and specificity of NLR in detecting ovarian cancer was 66.1% and 82.7%, respectively
In early stage ovarian cancer, CA125 was not elevated in 19 of 49 pts
7 of 19 pts were NLR positive
NLR positive, stage III/IV, and older age were independent poor prognostic factors, and being NLR positive was the most powerful predictive variable
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