BACKGROUND

Lymph node metastasis (LNM) is an important prognostic factor for breast cancer. Inflammatory stimulation can change tumor microenvironment and lead to LNM, but the relationship between LNM and peripheral immunoinflammatory indices has not been clarified in breast cancer.

METHODS

The clinical information of 1918 patients with breast cancer admitted to Meizhou People's Hospital from October 2017 to December 2023 were retrospectively analyzed. The relationship of clinicopathological features (age, body mass index (BMI), ABO blood types, family history of cancer, tumor site, disease stage, LNM, distant metastasis, and molecular subtypes) and peripheral immunoinflammatory indices (pan-immune inflammation value (PIV), systemic immune inflammation index (SII), and system inflammation response index (SIRI)) were analyzed.

RESULTS

There were 935 (48.7%) patients had no LNM and 983 (51.3%) had LNM. There were statistically significant differences in the distributions of ABO blood groups (=0.022) and molecular subtypes (<0.001) between the two groups. PIV, SII, and SIRI levels in patients with LNM were significantly higher than those without LNM (all <0.05). The proportions of LNM in patients with high PIV, SII, and SIRI levels were higher than those with low PIV, SII, and SIRI levels, respectively. Logistic regression analysis showed that non-O blood type (non-O blood type vs O blood type, odds ratio (OR): 1.327, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.056-1.667, =0.015), luminal B subtype (luminal B vs luminal A, OR: 2.939, 95% CI: 2.147-4.022, <0.001), HER2+ subtype (HER2+ vs luminal A, OR: 2.044, 95% CI: 1.388-3.009, <0.001), and high SIRI level (≥0.875 vs <0.875, OR: 1.572, 95% CI: 1.092-2.265, =0.015) were independently associated with LNM.

CONCLUSION

Non-O blood type, luminal B and HER2+ subtypes, and high SIRI level (≥0.875) have potential role in predicting the status of LNM in breast cancer patients.