ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Syst. Biol.
Sec. Data and Model Integration
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsysb.2025.1656683
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Bioinformatics and AI to Unravel Multi-Organ Dynamics and Therapeutic Avenues in Renal DiseasesView all articles
The role of neutrophil‑to‑lymphocyte ratio in the prognosis of chronic kidney disease: insights from the NHANES cohort study
Provisionally accepted
- Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, China
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Objective: To investigate the association of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) with the cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all‑cause mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Methods: Using date from NHANES survey 2009-2018, 2635 patients with CKD were eventually included in this study. The population was stratified into two groups based on the median NLR. Kaplan-Meier method with log-rank tests for significance was used for survival analysis. Weighted Cox proportional hazards regression models were employed to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) for all-cause and CVD mortality. The potential nonlinear relationship between NLR and CVD and all-cause mortality was assessed using restricted cubic spline (RCS) models. The time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was utilized to assess the precision of NLR in predicting survival outcomes. Results: The Kaplan-Meier curve indicated a significant difference in overall survival between the two groups (log-rank test, p < 0.0001). Compared to lower NLR group, participants in the higher NLR group had HR of 1.56 (1.30, 1.87) for all-cause mortality and 2.07 (1.51, 2.84) for CVD mortality, respectively. We observed a significant nonlinear relationship between NLR and CVD and all-cause mortality (p < 0.0001). The time-dependent ROC curve demonstrated that the areas under the curve for 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year survival rates were 0.69, 0.65, 0.63, and 0.62 for all-cause mortality, and 0.71, 0.67, 0.66, and 0.64 for CVD mortality, respectively. Conclusion: A higher NLR is linked to an elevated risk of CVD and all-cause mortality in patients with CKD. Additionally, NLR can serve as a potential prognostic indicator for CKD patients.
Keywords: Neutrophil‑to‑lymphocyte ratio (NLR), Chronic kidney disease (CKD), All-cause mortality, Cardiovascular disease mortality, Inflammation
Received: 30 Jun 2025; Accepted: 10 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wang, Yuan and Zhao. 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: Jin Zhao, zhj_special@163.com
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