Meta-Analysis of Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio and Breast Cancer Outcomes

Ziqian Zhao's meta-analysis, published on figshare in 2026, synthesizes data from 56 studies involving 16,539 breast cancer patients. The dataset contains pooled hazard ratios and odds ratios evaluating the association between pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and survival outcomes or treatment response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The analysis was conducted using Stata 18.0 and Review Manager 5.4.

Use Cases

• Training prognostic models based on aggregated hazard ratios for overall survival, disease-free survival, and recurrence-free survival.
• Analyzing the relationship between a hematological biomarker and pathological complete response rates from pooled odds ratios.
• Conducting sensitivity analyses on multivariable-adjusted estimates for biomarker stability.
• Studying heterogeneity in biomarker cutoff values across clinical studies.

Strengths

• Includes data from 56 studies with an aggregate sample of 16,539 patients.
• Provides specific pooled effect sizes (e.g., HR=1.89 for OS) with 95% confidence intervals and p-values.
• Findings are supported by 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.
• Substantial heterogeneity and inconsistent NLR cutoffs across included studies are noted by the author.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Ziqian Zhao.

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of studies from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library.

Time Range

Studies published up to April 2026.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 04:52:34; freshness should be verified.