Change in systemic inflammation markers and CEA levels as predictive marker for chemotherapy response and prognosis in metastatic colorectal cancer.

Abstract

e15053Background: This study aimed to evaluate the value of systemic inflammation markers and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels as predicting chemotherapy response and prognosis in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Methods: We retrospectively evaluated 503 patients who received first-line palliative chemotherapy for mCRC between Jan, 2008 and Dec, 2014. We evaluated the changes in neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and modified Glasgow Prognostic Score (mGPS) before and after chemotherapy. These were categorized into group A (low to low), group B (high to low), group C (low to high), and group D (high to high). The CEA-response was defined as CEA-CR (CEA normalization), CEA-PR (≥50% decrease in CEA levels), CEA-PD (≥50% increase in CEA levels), and CEA-SD (non-CR/PR/PD). Overall and progression-free survivals were evaluated according to NLR, mGPS and CEA levels. Results: High NLR (P = 0.001) and mGPS (P = 0.002) were correlated with elevated CEA levels. In multivariate analysis, high pre-chemothe...