Journal of Inflammation Research (Jan 2023)

Fashionable, but What is Their Real Clinical Usefulness? NLR, LMR, and PLR as a Promising Indicator in Colorectal Cancer Prognosis: A Systematic Review

  • Misiewicz A,
  • Dymicka-Piekarska V

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 16
pp. 69 – 81

Abstract

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Aleksandra Misiewicz,1,* Violetta Dymicka-Piekarska2,* 1Medical Diagnostic Laboratory Lab 110, Bialystok, Poland; 2Department of Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics, Medical University of Bialystok, Białystok, Poland*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Violetta Dymicka-Piekarska, Department of Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics, Medical University of Bialystok, Waszyngtona Str. 15, Bialystok, 15-276, Poland, Tel +48 85 746 85 84, Email [email protected]: The link between inflammation and cancer is still an attractive subject of many studies because systemic inflammatory response has been proven to play a pivotal role in cancer progression and metastasis. The strongest relationship between chronic inflammation and cancer development is observed in colorectal cancer (CRC). The evaluation of ratios derived from the routinely performed inflammatory biomarkers shows limited performances and limited clinical utility when individually used as prognostic factors for patients with CRC. In this review, we would like to summarize the latest knowledge about the diagnostic utility of systemic inflammatory ratios: neutrophil/lymphocyte (NLR), lymphocyte/monocyte (LMR), and platelet/lymphocyte (PLR) in CRC. We focused on the papers that assessed the diagnostic utility of blood cell parameters on the basis of the area under the ROC curve published in the recent 6 years. Identification of biomarkers that are significantly associated with prognostic in cancer would help the selection of patients with a high risk of poor outcomes.Keywords: biomarkers, colorectal cancer, inflammation, prognosis

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