Blood-Based Biomarkers Are Associated with Disease Recurrence and Survival in Gastrointestinal Stroma Tumor Patients after Surgical Resection

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory blood count biomarkers may improve recurrence risk stratification and inform long-term prognosis of cancer patients. Here, we quantify the prognostic impact of blood-based biomarkers on recurrence risk and long-term survival in a large cohort of gastrointestinal stroma tumor (GIST) patients after curative surgery. METHODS: One-hundred-forty-nine consecutive GIST patients were followed-up for a median period of 4.8 years. Local recurrence, distant metastasis, and death occurred in 9, 21, and 31 patients, respectively. Time-to-event and competing risk analysis were applied to study the association between haemoglobin (Hb) level, white blood cell count (WBC), neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), derived NLR (dNLR), lymphocyte/monocyte ratio (LMR), and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) with risk of local or distant recurrence (RR), recurrence free survival (RFS), and overall survival (OS). RESULTS: A low Hb (p = 0.029), and elevations in the parameters WBC (p = 0.004), NLR (p = 0.015) and dNLR (p = 0.037) were associated with a poor OS in GIST patients in multivariate analysis. Moreover, a low Hb (p = 0.049) and an elevated WBC (p = 0.001), NLR (p = 0.007), dNLR (p = 0.043) and PLR (p = 0.024) were independently associated with decreased RFS after adjusting for Miettinen score. However, only an increase of dNLR/NLR showed a significant association to higher RR (p = 0.048). Inclusion of NLR or PLR to Miettinen risk score did not reasonably improve the clinical risk prediction of 2-year RFS. CONCLUSION: Low Hb, elevated WBC, elevated dNLR, and elevated PLR are independent prognostic factors for a worse clinical outcome in GIST patients after curative resection.