Meta-Analysis of Pretreatment Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio and Survival in Breast Cancer

A 2026 meta-analysis by Ziqian Zhao synthesizes data from 56 studies involving 16,539 breast cancer patients. The study examines the association between pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and survival outcomes following neoadjuvant chemotherapy. It reports pooled hazard ratios for overall, disease-free, and recurrence-free survival, as well as odds ratios for pathologic complete response.

Use Cases

• Evaluating the prognostic value of a hematological marker (NLR) for survival outcomes in breast cancer.
• Training predictive models for pathologic complete response (pCR) based on pretreatment blood counts.
• Conducting sensitivity analyses on multivariable-adjusted estimates for biomarker stability.
• Informing the design of prospective clinical trials for biomarker validation in oncology.

Strengths

• Includes data from 56 studies with a total of 16,539 patients, providing a substantial evidence base.
• Reports specific pooled hazard ratios (e.g., HR=1.89 for OS) and odds ratios (OR=0.50 for pCR) with confidence intervals.
• Findings remained stable in sensitivity analyses restricted to multivariable-adjusted estimates.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is very small (12.2 KB), indicating limited scope, likely containing summary statistics rather than patient-level data.

Provenance

Source

Ziqian Zhao via figshare

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of studies from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library up to April 2026.

Time Range

Studies published up to April 2026.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 04:52:39; freshness should be verified.