Abstract PO5-15-03: Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and absolute lymphocyte count, inflammatory markers, may predict lymph node metastasis in elderly patients with operable breast cancer

Abstract Background: Blood-derived systemic inflammatory markers such as neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) and absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) have been demonstrated as predictive markers of recurrence and prognosis in several malignancies. Increased chronic inflammation with aging has been reported to be involved in cancer cells and their microenvironment. Several studies have also reported a close relationship between inflammatory markers and cancer grade and prognosis in the elderly. In this study, we retrospectively examined the relationship between lymphocyte-related inflammatory markers and prognosis in elderly breast cancer patients. Method: We included 602 patients diagnosed with primary invasive breast cancer at 8 institutions between 2008 and 2013, all of whom were older than 70 years old and had undergone breast cancer surgery. Preoperative blood collection data were used to analyze the relationship between NLR, PLR, LMR, ALC and clinicopathological data including recurrence. Results: The pathological stages of the 602 patients were Stage I: 275, Stage II: 276, and Stage III: 51, with median NLR, PLR, LMR, and ALC values of 2.21, 134.51, 6.76, and 1840, respectively. The mean age of the patients was 75.3 years. The median follow-up was 72.8 months. 76 patients relapsed, and the mean time to relapse was 42.7 months. Lymphocyte-associated inflammatory markers and Li Sheng pathological characteristics showed no significant differences in stage, presence or absence of recurrence, or form of recurrence, but lymph node metastasis on surgical pathology showed significant differences between cases with and without lymph node metastasis in NLR and ALC (P< 0.05). Conclusions: LMR and ALC were considered useful biomarkers that can be easily measured to predict lymph node metastasis in operable elderly breast cancer Citation Format: Emi Tokuda, Midori Morita, Akihiko Shimomura, Yoshiya Horimoto, Yukino Kawamura, Yumiko Ishizuka, Katsutoshi Sekine, Sayaka Obayashi, Yuki Kojima, Toru Higuchi. Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and absolute lymphocyte count, inflammatory markers, may predict lymph node metastasis in elderly patients with operable breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO5-15-03.