Systemic inflammation tied to malnutrition in cancer patients

The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), as a measure of systemic inflammation, may be a signal of malnutrition among hospitalized cancer patients, a recent study has found.

Researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 119 unselected cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and/or surgery. Malnutrition was assessed using the 2002 nutritional risk screening (NRS 2002) tool. All participants contributed venous blood sample for detection of systemic inflammation.

Area under the curve (AUC) analysis found that an NLR value of 5.0 was the optimal cutoff to differentiate participants according to their nutritional risk. The AUC was 0.72±0.04, with sensitivity and specificity values of 60.9 percent and 76.4 percent, respectively.

Sixty-six participants fell below the threshold, while 53 had NLR ≥5.0. Baseline demographic variables were comparable between groups. The NRS 2002 found that the latter group had a significantly higher prevalence of nutritional risk (73.6 percent vs 37.9 percent).

Such risk was reflected in significant anthropometric differences between groups, with patients with NLR ≥5.0 showing significantly lower body weight (p=0.01) and body mass index (p=0.02). C-reactive protein was also significantly elevated in patients with high NLR (p=0.003), further underscoring a potential link between inflammation and nutritional status.

Logistic regression analysis confirmed that NLR ≥5.0 increased the likelihood of nutritional risk by around 70 percent (odds ratio, 1.73, 95 percent confidence interval, 1.23–2.42; p=0.001).

“In hospitalized, unselected cancer patients, systemic inflammation, when measured by blood NLR, was associated with nutritional risk,” the researchers said. “According to our findings, the cutoff point for NLR in predicting nutritional risk is ≥5.0, and more studies may use this value to predict clinical outcomes during cancer patient hospitalization.”