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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Oncol.

Sec. Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention

Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1669838

This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Nutrition in Cancer Therapy: Approaches to Improve Patient Outcomes and SurvivalView all 8 articles

Combined assessment of inflammation and food intake contributes to prognostic stratification of gastric cancer

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Beijing Shijitan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
  • 2Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
  • 3Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: Patients with gastric cancer (GC) present with chronic inflammation and malnutrition risk. Lymphocyte-to-C-reactive protein ratio (LCR) and food intake are promising indicators for predicting inflammatory and nutritional states. Methods: This multi-center cohort study included 763 patients with GC. Time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curves were generated to determine the prediction accuracy of 16 systemic inflammatory indicators. Association of the model constructed by LCR and food intake with overall survival (OS) were analyzed using the Kaplan–Meier method and Cox regression model. Results: In this analysis, patients with reduced food intake accounted for 60.4%. The area under the curve and C-index of LCR for all-cause mortality were higher than those of the other indicators in patients with GC and there was a significant inverse relationship between LCR and all-cause mortality (per SD increment HR: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.65–0.96; P=0.016). Patients with reduced food intake had lower LCR than those patients without reduced food intake. Low LCR had combined effects with reduced food intake on unfavorable OS of patients with GC. Conclusions: Combined assessment of inflammation and food intake contributes to prognostic stratification of GC. Active therapeutic measures to reduce inflammation and increase nutrition may improve outcomes of affected patients.

Keywords: gastric cancer, lymphocyte to C-reactive protein ratio, food intake, nutrition, Overallsurvival

Received: 20 Jul 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhang, Liu, Shi, Liu, Chen, Zheng, Bu and Shi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Hanping Shi, shihp@ccmu.edu.cn

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