Prognostic efficacy of platelet/lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio in patients with gastric cancer

Abstract

Cancer is the main cause of death before age 70. Gastric cancer (GC) is responsible for 1 in 13 deaths worldwide and is predominant in men. Inflammation is closely related to cancer, as it activates different blood cells such as neutrophils, lymphocytes, platelets, etc. A bibliographic review was carried out to collect and analyze studies concerning the prognostic efficacy of neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in patients with gastric cancer. Upon analysis, several studies indicated that elevated values of both NLR and PLR show poor prognosis. However, we suggest that more research is needed to obtain cutoff values according to GC staging, in order to be a helpful tool in GC diagnosis and prognosis.