Circulating basophil count as a prognostic marker of tumor aggressiveness and survival outcomes in colorectal cancer

BACKGROUND: Accumulating evidence demonstrated immune/inflammation-related implications of basophils in affecting tissue microenvironment that surrounded a tumor, and this study aimed to elucidate the clinical value of serum basophil count level. METHODS: Between December 2007 and September 2013, 1029 patients diagnosed with stage I–III CRC in Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center meeting the essential criteria were identified. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to construct the survival curves. Several Cox proportional hazard models were constructed to assess the prognostic factors. A simple predictor (CB classifier) was generated by combining serum basophil count and serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) level which had long been accepted as the most important and reliable prognostic factor in CRC. RESULTS: The preoperative basophils count < 0.025*10(9)/L was strongly associated with higher T stage, higher N stage, venous invasion, perineural invasion, elevated serum CEA level, and thus poor survival (P < 0.05). Moreover, multivariate Cox analysis showed that patients with low level of preoperative basophils count had an evidently poorer DFS [Hazard ratio (HR) = 2.197, 95% CI 1.868–2.585]. CONCLUSIONS: As a common immune/inflammation-related biomarker available from the blood routine examination, low level of preoperative serum basophil count was associated with aggressive biology and indicated evidently poor survival. Preoperative serum basophil count would be a useful and simple marker for the management of CRC patients.