Prognostic role of pretreatment blood lymphocyte count in patients with solid tumors: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background

To evaluate the prognostic value of pretreatment lymphocyte counts with respect to clinical outcomes in patients with solid tumors.

Methods

Systematic literature search of electronic databases (Pubmed, Embase and Web of Science) up to May 1, 2018 was carried out by two independent reviewers. We included Eligible studies assessed the prognostic impact of pretreatment lymphocytes and had reported hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for endpoints including overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Only English publications were included.

Results

A total of 42 studies comprising 13,272 patients were included in this systematic review and meta-analysis. Low pretreatment lymphocyte count was associated with poor OS (HR = 1.27, 95% CI 1.16–1.39, P < 0.001, I ² = 58.5%) and PFS (HR = 1.27, 95% CI 1.15–1.40, P < 0.001, I ² = 25.7%). Subgroup analysis disaggregated by cancer type indicated that low pretreatment lymphocytes were most closely associated with poor OS in colorectal cancer followed by breast cancer and renal cancer.

Conclusions

Low pretreatment lymphocyte count may represent an unfavorable prognostic factor for clinical outcomes in patients with solid tumors.

Contributors

Chengyang Li: [e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Cancer Cell Int

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Cancer Cell Int

Title: Cancer Cell International

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1475-2867

Publication date (Electronic): 10 January 2020

Publication date PMC-release: 10 January 2020

Publication date Collection: 2020

Volume: 20

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.412594.f, Department of Urology, , The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, ; 6 Shuangyong Road, Nanning, 530021 Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region China

[2 ]GRID grid.412594.f, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, , The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, ; 6 Shuangyong Road, Nanning, 530021 Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region China

Article

Publisher ID: 1094

DOI: 10.1186/s12935-020-1094-5

PMC ID: 6954501

Copyright statement: © The Author(s) 2020

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001809, National Natural Science Foundation of China;

Award ID: No. 81660125

Award Recipient : Chengyang Li

Categories

Subject: Primary Research

Custom metadata

issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2020