Effects of Gender on White Blood Cell Populations and Neutrophil-Lymphocyte Ratio Following Gastrectomy in Patients with Stomach Cancer

Abstract

Alterations of absolute number or percentage of circulating white blood cell (WBC) subsets are associated with psychological and physical stress. Gender effects on the changes of circulating WBC subsets following surgical treatment have not been determined. Therefore, the current study aimed to determine whether circulating neutrophils, lymphocytes and monocytes, and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (N/L) are different following major surgery according to the gender. We studied 409 male patients and 212 female patients who underwent total or subtotal gastrectomy due to stomach cancer, from 1 January to 31 December in 2005. The WBC count and percentage of its subsets were obtained from database and N/L was directly calculated from the full blood count preoperatively, immediate postoperatively, and postoperative day 1, 3, 5 in a retrospective manner. Compared to preoperative values, neutrophilia, lymphopenia, monocytopenia, and increased N/L were associated with gastrectomy in all patients. In the comparison study between genders, there were significantly increased proportion of neutrophils, decreased lymphocytes and monocytes, and higher N/L in female patients than in male patients after gastrectomy. These findings indicate that female patients showed more immune-compromised response to gastrectomy than male patients.

Elevated Serum Neutrophil to Lymphocyte and Platelet to Lymphocyte Ratios Could be Useful in Lung Cancer Diagnosis

“…Larger platelets are more metabolically and enzymatically active than smaller platelets (Mangalpally et al, 2010). Recently, elevated preoperative or pretreatment NLR, PLR and MPV detected in peripheral blood have been identified in various cancers, including colon cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer ovarian cancer and breast cancer (Walsh et al, 2005;Gwak et al, 2007;Smith et al, 2009;Sharaiha et al, 2011;Thavaramara et al, 2011;Azab et al, 2012;Kilincalp et al 2013).…”

The effect of peripheral blood values on prognosis of patients with locally advanced gastric cancer before treatment

“…Therefore, the role of immune system on disease cessation or progression has been recently investigated, and some hematological parameters including leukocyte counts have been shown as both a diagnostic and prognostic factors in various types of malignancies [1][2][3][4][5]. Furthermore, the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has been documented as a simple index of systemic inflammatory response in critically ill patients with malignancy [6][7][8][9]. Similary, preoperative platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) has been also suggested as an independent significant prognostic indicator in pancreatic cancer [10].…”

High preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio predicts poor survival in patients with gastric cancer

“…Increased numbers of neutrophils and/or decreased numbers of lymphocytes may suppress lymphokine-activated killer cells, thereby increasing the propensity to metastasis [13]. However, only limited information on the clinical signifi cance and prognostic signifi cance of NLR in patients with gastric cancer has been reported [14][15][16][17]. In this study, we measured the preoperative NLR in 1028 patients with primary gastric cancer to determine its clinicopathological and prognostic signifi cance.…”