Clinicopathological and prognostic significance of platelet to lymphocyte ratio in patients with gastric cancer

Abstract

// Xiaobin Gu 1 , Xian-Shu Gao 1 , Ming Cui 1 , Mu Xie 1 , Chuan Peng 1 , Yun Bai 1 , Wei Guo 2 , Linjun Han 2 , Xiaodong Gu 3 , Wei Xiong 4 1 Department of Radiation Oncology, Peking University First Hospital, Peking University, Beijing, China 2 Graduate School of Medicine, Hebei North University, Zhangjiakou, Hebei, China 3 Department of Breast Cancer Radiotherapy, Tumor Hospital of Shanxi Provence, Taiyuan, China 4 Department of Oncology, Tangshan People’s Hospital, Hebei, China Correspondence to: Xian-Shu Gao, email: doctorgaoxs@126.com Keywords: PLR, gastric cancer, biomarker, prognosis, meta-analysis Received: March 29, 2016      Accepted: June 30, 2016      Published: July 08, 2016 ABSTRACT The present study was aim to investigate the prognostic role of platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) for patients with gastric cancer (GC) using meta-analysis. A total of 13 studies (14 cohorts) with 6,280 subjects were included. By pooling hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs from each study, we found that elevated PLR was significantly associated with poorer overall survival (OS) (HR: 1.3, 95% CI: 1.1–1.52, p = 0.001; Ι ² = 68.5%, P h < 0.001) but not with poor disease-free survival (DFS) (HR: 1.6, 95% CI: 0.88–2.9, p = 0.122; I 2 = 87.8%, P h < 0.001). Subgroup analysis showed that a high PLR significantly predicted poor OS in Caucasian populations, patients receiving chemotherapy and patients at advanced stage. In addition, the cut-off value of PLR > 160 showed adequately prognostic value. Furthermore, elevated PLR was associated with lymph node metastasis and CEA levels in GC. Our meta-analysis showed that elevated PLR could be a significant prognostic biomarker for poor OS in patients with GC.