Evaluation of Preoperative Aspartate Transaminase/Alanine Transaminase Ratio as an Independent Predictive Biomarker in Patients With Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma Undergoing Cytoreductive Nephrectomy: APropensity Score Matching Study.

Abstract

The usefulness of the aspartate transaminase (AST)/alanine transaminase (ALT) ratio (De Ritis ratio) as a predictive biomarker for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy (CN) remains unclear. The data from 118 patients were retrospectively evaluated. The endpoints were cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS) after CN. We compared these according to the AST/ALT ratio before and after 1:1 propensity score matching. The independent predictors for CSS and OS were also analyzed. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.603. The maximum Youden index indicated that the cutoff value for the AST/ALT ratio was 1.24. Before matching, a high AST/ALT ratio was significantly associated with inferior CSS and OS (P< .05 for all). After matching, 34 patients each were allocated to the high and low AST/ALT ratio groups. In the matched cohort, CSS and OS tended to be lower in the high AST/ALT ratio group, although the results were not statistically significant (median CSS, 18.4 months vs. not reached, P=.121; OS, 18.4 months vs. not reached, P= .0957). Furthermore, multivariate analyses revealed that the AST/ALT ratio was an independent predictor for CSS and OS (CSS hazard ratio, 2.17, P= .0472; OS hazard ratio, 2.30, P=.0258). The preoperative AST/ALT ratio can be an effective predictive biomarker for CSS and OS in patients with mRCC.