Journal: Scientific reports
This study analyzed 843 patients with HER2-positive breast cancer to evaluate the prognostic and predictive value of baseline neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in relation to trastuzumab treatment.
With up to 120 months of follow-up, findings showed:
- Patients treated with trastuzumab who had a low baseline NLR had significantly better disease-free survival (DFS) compared to those with a high baseline NLR (5-year DFS: 93.02% vs. 81.53%).
- NLR did not impact DFS in patients not receiving trastuzumab.
Multivariate analysis confirmed that high baseline NLR independently predicted poorer DFS in trastuzumab-treated patients (HR=3.61).
These results support using baseline NLR as a simple, cost-effective biomarker to identify HER2-positive breast cancer patients most likely to benefit from trastuzumab therapy.