Associations between neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio and prognosis in patients with neuroblastoma

Objectives: Recent studies have shown that the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a new inflammatory marker that is effective in determining the prognosis of many solid tumors, chemotherapy responses, survival, and their recurrence rate. Therefore, we performed a retrospective study to investigate the effect of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) on risk factors and prognosis in these patients.Materials and methods: In this study, 246 pediatric patients with neuroblastoma who were diagnosed, treated, and followed up during 2000-2021 in Division of Pediatric Oncology, cukurova University Faculty of Medicine, were included. Required information of patients was obtained from archive files, Mergentech hospital program, and E-pulse system.Results: Median value for NLR was found to be 1.06, for PLR it was found as 92. The relationship of NLR values with age, stage, risk group, and Shimada was found to be statistically significant with p < .001, vanillylmandelic acid (VMA) (p = .006) also depicted the significant value. Likewise, the relationship of PLR values with age (p < .001), stage (p = .022), Shimada (p = .004), and N-Myc amplification (p = .039) was found to be statistically significant as well. Survival analysis showed that no statistically significant difference was observed among the higher and lower values of NLR. Survival rates were noticed to be higher in the lower values of NLR (10-year overall survival [OS] 55% vs. 49%, 10-year event-free survival (EFS) 54% vs. 43%), albeit nonsignificant.Conclusion: Pretreatment evaluation of NLR and PLR values in patients with neuroblastoma may be instructive in respect of prognosis and risk group.