A novel inflammation-nutrition biomarker score for predicting prognosis of patients with cancer: results from a multicenter study

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to develop an innovative inflammation-nutrition biomarker score (INS) system to stratify the prognoses of patients with cancer. METHODS: A total of 5,221 patients with cancer from multiple centers in China between June 2010 and December 2017 were enrolled in this prospective cohort study. We compared the commonly used inflammation and nutrition biomarkers and selected the most valuable to develop the novel INS system. Survival curves were assessed using the Kaplan–Meier method and the log-rank test to evaluate the difference in survival rates between groups. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to investigate the association between biomarkers and all-cause mortality. RESULTS: As the risk stratification of INS increased (1 to 5), the rate of death for cancer patients gradually increased (25.43% vs. 37.09% vs. 44.59% vs. 56.21% vs. 61.65%, p < 0.001). The INS system was associated with all-cause mortality in patients with cancer. Patients with both high inflammation and nutrition risk (INS = 5) were estimated to have much worse prognosis than those with neither (HR, 2.606; 95%CI, 2.261–3.003, p < 0.001). Subsequently, the results of randomized internal validation also confirmed that INS system had an ideal effect in identifying adverse outcomes. In addition, the INS system could be used as a supplement to pathological stages in prognosis assessment, and had a higher predictive value in comparison with the constitute biomarkers. Patients with a high INS had less functional ability, reduced quality of life, and were at high risk of malnutrition, cachexia, and poor short-term outcomes. CONCLUSION: The INS system based on inflammation and nutrition biomarkers is a simple and effective prognostic stratification tool for patients with cancer, which can provide a valuable reference for clinical prognosis assessment and treatment strategy formulation. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-022-10399-5.