Purpose: We sought to assess the prognostic and predictive value of a circulating inflammation signature (CISIG) and develop CISIG-based tools for predicting prognosis and guiding individualized induction chemotherapy (ICT) in non-metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).
Patients and Methods: We retrospectively collected a candidate inflammatory biomarker panel from patients with NPC treated with definitive radiotherapy between 2012 and 2017. We developed the CISIG using candidate biomarkers identified by a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression model. The Cox regression analyses were used to evaluate the CISIG prognostic value. A CISIG-based prediction model was constructed, validated, and assessed. Potential stratified ICT treatment effects were examined.
Results: A total of 1149 patients were analyzed. Nine biomarkers selected by LASSO regression in the training cohort were used to construct the CISIG, including hyaluronidase, laminin, procollagen III, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio, lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio, high-density lipoprotein, lactate dehydrogenase, and C-reactive protein-to-albumin ratio. CISIG was an independent prognostic factor for disease-free survival (DFS; hazard ratio: 2.65, 95% confidence interval: 1.93– 3.64; P < 0.001). High CISIG group (>− 0.2) was associated with worse 3-year DFS than low CISIG group in both the training (67.5% vs 88.3%, P < 0.001) and validation cohorts (72.3% vs 85.1%, P < 0.001). We constructed and validated a CISIG-based nomogram, which showed better performance than the clinical stage and Epstein–Barr virus DNA classification methods. A significant interaction between CISIG and the ICT treatment effect was observed (P  for interaction = 0.036). Patients with high CISIG values did not benefit from ICT, whereas patients with low CISIG values significantly benefited from ICT.
Conclusion: The developed CISIG, based on a circulating inflammatory biomarker panel, adds prognostic information for patients with NPC. The proposed CISIG-based tools offer individualized risk estimation to facilitate suitable ICT candidate identification.
Keywords: nasopharyngeal carcinoma, inflammatory biomarkers, circulating inflammation signature, prognostic value, predictive value, induction chemotherapy