JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Emerging evidences indicate that inflammation plays a crucial role in cancer prognosis. Inflammatory response biomarkers are recognized as promising prognostic factors for mortality in cancer patients.

Objective:

This study aims to evaluate the prognostic significance of systemic inflammatory response index (SIRI), systemic inflammatory index (SII), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), Inflammatory prognostic index (IPI) and C-reactive protein-albumin-lymphocyte (CALLY) index.

Methods:

The weighted Cox regressions, restricted cubic spline (RCS) models, Kaplan–Meier (KM) survival curves and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis were performed to assess the predictive value of six inflammatory markers for mortality. Subgroup analysis and interaction tests were conducted to examine associations within specific subpopulations.

Results:

After adjusting for various confounding factors, Cox regression models demonstrated that SIRI, NLR, IPI and CALLY were significant predictors of all-cause mortality; while IPI and CALLY were positively correlated with cancer mortality, and only SIRI enable to predict cardiovascular mortality. There were dose-response relationships between six inflammatory markers and mortality outcomes. KM survival curve further illustrated the differences between the tertile groups. Six inflammatory indexes exhibited moderate abilities to predict all-cause mortality. IPI showed the highest area under the curve for cancer mortality, and SIRI was the most efficient predictor of cardiovascular mortality. Moreover, there was no interaction between six inflammatory markers and most subgroup variables.

Conclusions:

SIRI, NLR, IPI and CALLY played convenient and cost‐effective roles in predicting mortality among cancer patients. However, SII and PLR may not be reliable prognostic biomarkers.