Inflammatory Prognostic Index in Metastatic Renal Carcinoma Treated with Nivolumab

Objective: To evaluate the utility of inflammatory prognostic index (IPI), albumin, c-reactive protein (CRP), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) as predictive biomarkers of oncologic outcome in metastatic renal cell cancer (mRCC) patients treated with nivolumab. Study Design: Descriptive study. Place and Duration of Study: Manisa Celal Bayar University, Aydın Adnan Menderes University, Bitlis Tatvan State Hospital and Private Hatay Defne Hospital Medical Oncology Clinics, Turkey, from January 2017 to June 2020. Methodology: Seventy-five mRCC patients treated with nivolumab between January 2017 and June 2020 were enrolled. Several factors were retrospectively investigated, including IPI, CRP, LDH, and albumin level, for their association with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). The IPI was calculated as CRP × NLR/albumin. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the prognostic value of relevant factors. Results: When analysed according to the calculated IPI score, it is seen that the group with <2.153 has an OS duration of 96.3 months, while the group with ≥2.153 has a shorter time of 42.9 months (p=0.02). In the analysis performed according to albumin level, it was reported that those with low levels (22.8 months) had worse median OS than those with high levels (92.8 months) (p=0.004). According to the cox regression analysis results, it was determined that those with a high IPI score significantly increased the risk of death compared to those with a low score (HR:2.4, p=0.023). However, this significance could not be confirmed in the multivariate analysis. It was analysed that those with low albumin levels significantly increased the risk of death compared to both univariate analysis (HR:3.3, p=0.007) and multivariate analysis (HR:4.4, p=0.003). Conclusion: Those with high IPI scores and low albumin levels were associated with worse median OS. However, only the multivariate analysis analysed albumin level as an independent prognostic variable. Prospective and more extensive research is needed to consolidate the potential prognostic power of these markers.