ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Head and Neck Cancer
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1676824
Prognostic Significance of Peripheral Blood Inflammatory Biomarkers (SII, PLR, NLR, LMR, SIRI, PIV, PNI) in Lip Cancer: NLR as an Independent Biomarker for Survival Outcomes
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
- 2Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
- 3Shanxi Cancer Hospital, Taiyuan, China
- 4Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
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Background: Lip cancer is a type of oral cancer with a different prognosis than that of other cancers. However, a lack of well-established understanding of the relationship between the peripheral blood inflammatory biomarker (PBIB) and prognosis in patients with lip cancer is evident. This study investigated the prognostic value of inflammatory markers and other unfavourable prognostic factors. It compares the systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR), systemic inflammation response index (SIRI), pan-immune-inflammation value (PIV) and prognosis nutritional index (PNI) in patients with lip cancer. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study included 122 patients with lip cancer. Clinical characteristics and haematological parameters were retrospectively obtained prior to treatment. SII, PLR, NLR, LMR, SIRI, PIV and PNI were calculated to analyse their effects on survival and recurrence further. Results: Receiver operating characteristics curve analysis demonstrated SII >534.286, PLR >146.528, NLR >2.134, LMR ≤4.000, SIRI >0.7100, PIV >211.930, PNI ≤51.900 were factors associated with increased mortality. Univariate analysis showed that these inflammatory parameters were associated with a lower survival rate. In multivariate analysis, NLR was identified as having a cumulative role in predicting overall survival (HR =5.885, 95% CI: 2.131–16.256, P <0.001). Conclusion: This study revealed that NLR is a promising blood biomarker in patients with lip cancer. The predictive power of other PBIBs, albeit showing a trend towards significance, were not statistically significant, possibly due to the limited number of cases. The clinical applicability of other haematological indicators requires further study.
Keywords: Lip cancer, Peripheral blood inflammatory biomarker (PBIB), Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), prognostic factors, Survival outcomes
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, An, Wang, Yan, Gao, Wang, Yu and Wen. 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: Shuxin Wen, wsxsx@sxent.org
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