The prognostic and predictive value of the albumin-bilirubin score in advanced pancreatic cancer

Albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) showed its prognostic and predictive value in hepatobiliary disease like hepatocellular carcinoma. However, little has been known about its role in pancreatic cancer. In this retrospective study, 149 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (APC) treated in the Shanghai General Hospital from January 2009 to December 2014 were enrolled as the training cohort and 120 patients treated from January 2015 to December 2018 were taken as the validation cohort. We generated the ALBI score according previous studies. The correlations between ALBI and clinicopathological parameters were evaluated with the Pearson Chi-square test. Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test were conducted to determine the correlation between ALBI and overall survival (OS). Then we used Cox regression model to investigate the prognostic significance of ALBI. We further assessed retrospectively whether ALBI score could be used to identify combination therapy candidates for APC. Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status, hemoglobin, aspartate aminotransferase, and alanine aminotransferase were found to be significantly correlated with ALBI. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that the median OS in patients with a pretreatment ALBI ≥−2.6 was 7.0 months, which was significantly shorter than OS of patients with a ALBI <−2.6 (13.0 months, P = .001). ALBI was independently correlated with OS in multivariate analysis. In the subgroup analysis, ALBI showed significant prognostic value in patients with liver metastasis but not those without liver metastasis in all 3 cohorts. In addition, only in the group with ALBI <−2.6, patients receiving combination therapy showed better prognosis than those receiving monotherapy. In conclusion, ALBI was a promising prognostic biomarker in APC with liver metastasis. ALBI also showed predictive value in identifying combination therapy candidates for patients with APC.