ArticleBreast cancer research and treatment2024
Deconstructing neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in early breast cancer: lack of prognostic utility and biological correlates across tumor subtypes.
Article in Breast cancer research and treatment, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- The peripheral immune landscape of human breast cancer.Oncoimmunology · 2026Review
- The immunology of human breast cancer.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2026Review
- Unlocking the predictive value of post-neoadjuvant immune biomarkers in breast cancer: neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII).Breast cancer research and treatment · 2026Article
- Analysis of Neutrophil/Lymphocyte Ratio as a Potential Biomarker Stratified by Breast Cancer Histologic Subtype.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Evaluation of Diagnostic, Prognostic, and Predictive Role of Hematologic Inflammatory Indices NLR, PLR, and LMR in Common Solid Tumors.Cancer reports (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2025Review
- Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes in Breast and Female Genital Tract Cancers: Overlooked Potential and Unexplored Frontiers.Cancer medicine · 2025Review
- Circulating chemokines and leukocytes and their impact on breast cancer prognosis.Discover oncology · 2025Article
- Gustave Roussy Immune Score (GRImScore) as a Novel Prognostic Index for Stage III Gastric Cancer Patients: A Real-World Retrospective Study.International journal of general medicine · 2025Article
- Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio predicts long-term survival in early triple negative breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy.Ecancermedicalscience · 2025Article
- Breast Cancer: Extracellular Matrix and Microbiome Interactions.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
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14 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
purposeThe prognostic utility and biological correlates of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), a potential biomarker of the balance between immune response and the inflammatory status, are still uncertain in breast cancer (BC).
methodsWe analysed a cohort of 959 women with early breast cancer, mostly treated with neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy. Clinical and pathological data, survival, NLR (continuous and categorical) and stromal tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (sTIL) were evaluated.
resultsNLR was only weakly associated with Ki67, while no association was found for grade, histology, immunohistochemical subtype or stage. Lymphocyte infiltration of the tumor did not correlate with NLR (Rho: 0.05, p = 0.30). These results were similar in the whole group and across the different BC subtypes, with no differences in triple negative BC. Relapse free interval (RFI), breast cancer specific survival (BCSS) and overall survival (OS) changed according to pre-treatment NLR neither in the univariate nor in the multivariate Cox models (RFI: HR 0.948, p = 0.61; BCSS: HR 0.920, p = 0.57; OS: HR 0.96, p = 0.59).
conclusionThese results question the utility of NLR as a prognostic biomarker in early breast cancer and suggest the lack of correlation of NLR with tumor microenvironment immune response.
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