Prognostic importance of systemic inflammation and insulin resistance in patients with cancer: a prospective multicenter study

BACKGROUND: Systemic inflammation and insulin resistance (IR) are often associated with poor prognosis in cancer. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic value of surrogate systemic inflammation and IR indices in patients with cancer. METHODS: This multicenter prospective study included 5,221 patients with cancer, with a mean age of 59.41±11.15 years, of whom 3,061 (58.6%) were male. The surrogate IR indices included low-density lipoprotein cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LHR) ratio, total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (TC/ HDL-c) ratio, triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (TG/HDL-c) ratio, and fasting triglyceride glucose (TyG). Prognostic receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves and C-indices were used to select a better surrogate IR index in patients with cancer. The prognostic value of the indicators was evaluated using univariate and multivariate survival analyses. RESULTS: In this study, the median survival time of patients was 44.5 (40.5–51.4) months, and the overall mortality in the 12-month period was 1,115 (53.7%), with 196 mortality events per 1,000 patient-years of patients’ follow-up. The prognostic ROC curve and C-index suggested that the prognostic value of LHR was better than that of the other IR indices. The multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for overall survival (OS) were higher in patients with high C-reactive protein (CRP) (HR, 1.51; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.38–1.65) and high LHR (HR, 1.20; 95% CI: 1.06–1.37), respectively. The mortality rate of patients with both high CRP and LHR was 1.75-fold higher than that of patients with both low CRP and LHR. CONCLUSION: Both CRP and LHR showed good survival predictions in patients with cancer. CRP combined with LHR can improve the predictive power of patients with cancer. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-022-09752-5.