Prognostic utility of the combination of monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in patients with NSTEMI after primary percutaneous coronary intervention: a retrospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to evaluate prognostic value of the combination of monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR) with neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) for predicting long-term major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in patients with non-ST elevated myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) who underwent primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING

Civil Aviation General Hospital, Beijing, China.

PARTICIPANTS

678 patients with NSTEMI undergoing primary PCI between July 2010 and July 2015 were enrolled.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

The main outcomes were MACE. The cumulative MACE-free survival rates were calculated by Kaplan-Meier analysis and the independent predictors of MACE were assessed by Cox regression analysis.

RESULTS

According to the cut-off values of MLR 0.36 and NLR 2.15, the study population was classified into four groups: low MLR + low NLR group (n=319), low MLR + high NLR group (n=126), high MLR + low NLR group (n=102) and high MLR + high NLR group (n=131). The high MLR + high NLR group had a lower MACE-free survival rate than the other three groups (p logrank <0.001). Both MLR (HR 2.128, 95% CI 1.458 to 3.105) and NLR (HR 1.925, 95% CI 1.385 to 2.676) were independent predictors of long-term MACE. Moreover, the patients in the high MLR + high NLR group had an HR of 4.055 (95% CI 2.550 to 6.448) for long-term MACE, with the low-MLR + low NLR group as reference. Comparisons of receiver operating characteristic curves revealed that the combination of MLR with NLR achieved better performance in differentiating long-term MACE, compared with MLR, NLR, high-sensitivity C reactive protein and brain natriuretic peptide alone, and had similar performance to all other pairwise combinations of the four biomarkers.

CONCLUSIONS

Elevated levels of MLR and NLR were independent predictors of long-term MACE in patients with NSTEMI. Moreover, the combination of MLR and NLR could improve the prognostic value in predicting long-term MACE.