A meta-analysis of the clinical significance of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios in interstitial lung disease

Fei Dong, Leting Zheng, Weiwei An, Ting Xue and Xiaoning Zhong

PLOS ONE, 2023, vol. 18, issue 6, 1-19

Abstract: Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a group of diffuse parenchymal infiltrating diseases of different etiologies. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) can reflect ILD’s existence, progression, and prognosis and is currently regarded as a promising biological marker. This meta-analysis assessed elevated NLR levels in ILD for their predictive value. From inception to July 27, 2022, the Scopus, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase, and PubMed databases were checked thoroughly. We used the weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95% confidence interval (CI) to compare blood NLR values between groups. We examined the relationship between poor prognoses and elevated NLR concentrations in ILD patients using odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CI. After initially including 443 studies, 24 were ultimately analyzed. Fifteen studies(ILD:n = 2,912, Non-ILD: n = 2,868) revealed that the NLR values in the ILD group were relatively high (WMD = 0.61, 95% CI 0.43–0.79, p = 0.001). Eight articles (with poor prognoses: n = 407, without poor prognoses: n = 340) indicated that ILD patients with poor prognoses had higher NLR values (WMD = 1.33, 95% CI 0.32–2.33, p = 0.01). This distinction was especially noticeable in patients with the connective tissue disease (CTD)associated with ILD subgroup (WMD = 3.53, 95% CI 1.54–5.51, p = 0.0005). The pooled OR for increased NLR levels forecasting poor prognoses of ILD was 1.09 (95% CI 1.03–1.15, p = 0.0008). Increasing blood NLR values have clinical significance and application value for detecting ILD and predicting its poor prognosis, especially in CTD patients.

Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286956 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 86956&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0286956

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286956

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().