Inflammatory burden as a prognostic biomarker for cancer.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Systemic inflammation is the most representative host-tumor interaction in cancer. This study aimed to develop a novel inflammatory burden index (IBI) to assess the inflammatory burden of different cancers and predict the prognosis of patients with cancer.

METHODS

A total of 6359 cancer patients admitted to multiple centers from 2012 through 2019 were included in this study. The IBI was formulated as C-reaction protein × neutrophil/lymphocyte. Survival differences between the groups were compared using the Kaplan-Meier method. Cox proportional hazard regression analysis was used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the association between the inflammatory burden index and outcomes.

RESULTS

Cancers assessed by the IBI could be classified as high, moderate, or low inflammatory burden and had different prognostic stratification effects (46.5% vs 61.0% vs 83.0%; P < .001). Compared with other systemic inflammation biomarkers, the IBI had the highest accuracy in predicting survival. Patients with a high IBI had significantly lower survival rates than those with a low IBI (45.7% vs 69.1%; P < .001). For every standard deviation increase in the IBI, the risk of poor prognosis for patients with cancer increased by 10.3% (HR, 1.103; 95% CI, 1.072-1.136; P < .001). The IBI could be used as a useful prognostic supplement in the pathological stage. A high IBI was an independent high-risk factor that affected patient's physical condition, malnutrition, cachexia, and short-term outcomes and an independent risk factor for patients with cancer in both validation cohorts a (hazard ratio, 1.114; 95% confidence interval, 1.072-1.157; P < .001) and b (hazard ratio, 1.125; 95% confidence interval, 1.060-1.193; P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

The IBI, as a novel indicator of systemic inflammation, is a feasible and promising predictive biomarker in patients with cancer and can be used to assess the inflammatory burden of different cancers.