Background: To investigate the possible prognostic role of pretreatment derived neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (dNLR) in urological cancers, including renal cell carcinoma (RCC), prostate cancer (PCa), and urothelial cancer (UCa).
Materials and methods: Eligible studies were comprehensively searched from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science, up to April 2019. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the relationships.
Results: A total of 12 studies embracing 6585 patients were included in the meta-analysis. Our results indicated that a higher pretreatment dNLR was associated with a decreased cancer-specific survival (CSS, HR 2.67, 95% CI 1.06-6.71, P = 0.037) and disease-free survival (DFS, HR 2.02, 95% CI 1.03-3.94, P = 0.040) in RCC, but not for overall survival (OS, HR 1.05, 95% CI 0.71-1.53, P = 0.818). A higher dNLR was associated with an inferior biochemical recurrence-free survival (BRFS, HR 1.70, 95% CI 1.00-2.87, P = 0.049) and OS (HR 1.35, 95% CI 1.20-1.51, P < 0.001) in PCa. A higher dNLR was associated with a worse OS (HR 1.29, 95% CI 1.03-1.61, P = 0.029) and CSS (HR 1.51, 95% CI 1.06-2.15, P = 0.024) in UCa, but not for DFS (HR 1.44, 95% CI 0.89-2.34, P = 0.139).
Conclusion: A higher dNLR level was negatively associated with OS, CSS, DFS and BRFS, forecasting that it could be an independent prognosis predictor in urological cancers.
Keywords: Derived neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio; Meta-analysis; Prognosis; Urological cancer.
Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Ltd.