Value Of Albumin-globulin Ratio Research Articles

Low pretreatment serum globulin may predict favorable prognosis for gastric cancer patients.

An elevated serum albumin (ALB) and albumin/globulin ratio (AGR) have been reported to be associated with a favorable prognosis for several types of cancer. However, little is known about prognostic significance of globulin (GLB) in gastric cancer patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether GLB, ALB, and AGR analysis could predict the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer. A retrospective cohort of 186 patients with gastric cancer followed by radical surgery was recruited between January 2007 and December 2010. Levels for preoperative GLB and ALB were obtained and used to calculate the AGR. Survival analysis was used to evaluate the predictive value of GLB, ALB, and AGR. X-tile program determined 37.6, 33.4, and 1.33 as the optimal cutoff value for ALB, GLB, and AGR in terms of survival. Univariate analysis revealed that low GLB levels were significantly associated with favorable survival (P = 0.045). Conversely, low ALB levels were associated with a significantly worse survival (P = 0.000). In conclusion, low preoperative GLB level may serve as a valuable marker to predict the prognosis of gastric cancer patients.

Albumin-globulin ratio for prediction of long-term mortality in lung adenocarcinoma patients.

Prior studies showed a relationship between serum albumin and the albumin to globulin ratio with different types of cancer. We aimed to evaluate the predictive value of the albumin-globulin ratio (AGR) for survival of patients with lung adenocarcinoma. This retrospective study included 240 lung adenocarcinoma patients. Biochemical parameters before chemotherapy were collected and survival status was obtained from the hospital registry. The AGR was calculated using the equation AGR=albumin/ (total protein-albumin) and ranked from lowest to highest, the total number of patients being divided into three equal tertiles according to the AGR values. Furthermore, AGR was divided into two groups (low and high tertiles) for ROC curve analysis. Cox model analysis was used to evaluate the prognostic value of AGR and AGR tertiles. The mean survival time for each tertile was: for the 1st 9.8 months (95%CI:7.765-11.848), 2nd 15.4 months (95%CI:12.685-18.186), and 3rd 19.9 months (95%CI:16.495-23.455) (p<0.001). Kaplan-Meier curves showed significantly higher survival rates with the third and high tertiles of AGR in comparison with the first and low tertiles, respectively. At multivariate analysis low levels of albumin and AGR, low tertile of AGR and high performance status remained an independent predictors of mortality. Low AGR was a significant predictor of long-term mortality in patients with lung adenocarcinoma. Serum albumin measurement and calculation of AGR are easily accessible and cheap to use for predicting mortality in patients with lung adenocarcinoma.