The preoperative neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio does not correlate with the 21-gene recurrence score in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer patients

Aims: The aim of this study was to examine the correlation, if any, between the preoperative neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and the OncotypeDX^™ 21-gene recurrence score (RS) in patients with early-stage estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer (BC). Materials and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients diagnosed with primary ER-positive BC who were referred for the RS assay. The correlation between the preoperative NLR and the RS was analyzed. Results: For the 242 patients with sufficient data for analysis, the median age at diagnosis was 59.5 years. The tumor size ranged from 0.50 to 5.50 cm, with a mean size of 1.8 cm; 73.2% of the tumors were < 2 cm in size. Most of the tumors (66.3%) were of grade 2; the rest was nearly equally divided between grades 1 and 3. The test results for the progesterone receptor (PR) were positive in 86.6% of the cases. Lymph node metastases were present in 22.3% of the patients. The median RS was 18 (range 0-60) and the mean NLR value was 2.11 (range 0.49-7.49). We found no significant correlation between the NLR and the RS. Conclusion: Our data suggest that the preoperative NLR does not predict the 21-gene RS in patients with early-stage hormone-sensitive BC.