
Author(s) :
Dragoș Florin Goadă1, Andrada-Larisa Deac1, Loredana Bălăcescu1, Cosmin Lisencu1,2, Codruț Nistor1,2, Emil Pușcaș1,2, Claudia Cristina Burz1,3
1“Prof. Dr. Ion Chiricuţă” Oncology Institute, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2 Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, “Iuliu Haţieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania
3 Immunology and Allergology, Faculty of Medicine, ”Iuliu Hațieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Corresponding author: Dragoș Florin Goadă, Email: dragosgoada@gmail.com
Publication History: Received - , Revised - , Accepted - , Published Online - .
Copyright: © The author(s). Published by Casa Cărții de Știință.
User License: Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
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Abstract
Background: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer diagnosed worldwide, being the leading cause of cancer death among women. An elevated neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) is thought to be associated with a poorer outcome to treatment in oncological patients. Our study aims to assess the predictive value of NLR and PLR in terms of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in HER2-positive breast cancer patients.
Materials and methods: Patients diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer from 2010 to 2019, who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy in association with Trastuzumab, followed by surgery, were included in the study. The data were analyzed by using Fisher’s test, Mann-Whitney U test, and T-test.
Results: Seventy patients were included in the study. Pathologic complete response was observed in 2,86% of patients and 88,57% of patients showed a partial response to neoadjuvant treatment. The optimal NLR cut-off value was assessed at 1,7. 45,16% of patients who showed a partial response to neoadjuvant treatment had an NLR under the cut-off value. The p-values obtained while trying to find a correlation between NLR and PLR and the response to treatment were 0,697, respectively 0,361. In addition, the study found that luminal B subtype is more frequent in women under 50 years old and HER2-positive subtype is more frequent in women over 50 years old (p-value = 0,048).
Conclusions: Smaller NLR and PLR at diagnosis are associated with a better response to neoadjuvant treatment. However, using an NLR and PLR cut-off value for clinical decision making requires extreme caution, there still being some unresolved issues regarding the role of these non-invasive serological markers in predicting the response to treatment.