Effect of hypertension on preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio evaluation of prognosis of renal cell carcinoma.
Objective: As an indicator of inflammatory reaction of immune system, the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a significantly independent prognostic factor of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, the NLR was not added in any well-established prognostic models. Many physiologic factors were also associated with NLR, such as hypertension. As such, we evaluated the effect of hypertension on NLR evaluation of prognosis of RCC.
Methods: Hematological parameters and clinicopathological data during diagnosis were retrospectively recorded for 401 patients with RCC between the years 1999 and 2009. The standardized cutoff-finder algorithm was used to find the suitable NLR cutoff value for recurrence. The Log-rank test and Kaplan-Meier method were used to compare and estimate the recurrence-free survival. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to evaluate the association between NLR and clinicopathologic outcomes.
Results: In the analysis of total subjects, recurrence-free survival was significantly worse among patients with a preoperative NLR (>3.139 [21.9%] vs.≤3.139 [78.1%]; P<0.001). High NLR value was associated with high pathological TNM stage (P = 0.009, 0.018, 0.001, respectively). In the normotensive subgroup, recurrence-free survival was also significantly worse among patients with a preoperative NLR (>3.139 [22.6%] vs.≤3.139 [77.4%]; P<0.001). However, in the subgroup with hypertension, the difference of recurrence-free survival was not significant between patients with preoperative NLR (>3.139 [21.2%] vs.≤3.139 [78.8%]; P = 0.093). Moreover, multivariate analysis identified increased NLR as a poor prognosis index for recurrence-free survival in total group (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.27; 95% CI: 1.50-3.44; P<0.001) and normotensive subgroup (HR = 2.97; 95% CI: 1.74-5.07; P<0.001), but not in hypertensive subgroup (HR = 1.25; 95% CI: 0.59-2.65; P = 0.566).
Conclusions: Hypertension is a disturbance factor in the evaluation of prognosis of RCC by preoperative NLR.