Neutrophil-lymphocyte Ratio is a Negative Prognostic Biomarker for Luminal A Breast Cancer

Background: Inflammation plays an important role in the occurrence, development and metastasis of tumors. The neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is widely used to evaluate global inflammation in various tumor types. However, the prognostic role of NLR in patients with Luminal A breast cancer is rarely reported. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between preoperative NLR and the survival rate of patients with Luminal type A. Methods This study collected the data of 226 Luminal A breast cancer patients who were eligible in the Chongqing University Cancer Hospital from January 2011 to December 2016, and analyzed the relationship between preoperative NLR and survival time. The cutoff value of NLR was defined by ROC curve, and the overall survival (OS) time was estimated by Kaplan-Meier method. Cox analysis was performed to determine the correlation between clinicopathological parameters and prognosis. Results The OS of patients with NLR lower than 2.0 was significantly longer than that of patients with higher NLR ( P  < 0.0001). In the univariable cox regression analysis, the NLR, T stage (T3-T4 vs. T1-T2) and histology grade (II-III vs. I) were all significantly associated with OS. In the multivariable cox regression analysis, the NLR and the histology grade (II-III vs. I) were independent factors, the hazard ratio was 36.003 (95% CI: 4.912–263.92, P  < 0.0001) and 1.924 (95% CI: 1.14–3.25, p  = 0.014) respectively. Conclusions The results suggest that higher preoperative NLR related to worse prognosis in Luminal A breast cancer, NLR has a high prognostic value for patients with Luminal A breast cancer and preoperative NLR can be used as a reference index to evaluate the prognosis of Luminal A breast cancer.