Background: Recent research has shown a correlation between immune microenvironment and lymphoma biology. This study aims to investigate the prognostic significance of the immunologically relevant lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in the rituximab era.
Methodology/principal findings: We analyzed retrospective data from 438 newly diagnosed DLBCL patients treated with rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (R-CHOP) therapy. We randomly selected 200 patients (training set) to generate a cutoff value for LMR by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. LMR was then analyzed in a testing set (n = 238) and in all patients (n = 438) for validation. The LMR cutoff value for survival analysis determined by ROC curve in the training set was 2.6. Patients with low LMR tended to have more adverse clinical characteristics. Low LMR at diagnosis was associated with worse survival in DLBCL, and could also identify high-risk patients in the low-risk IPI category. Multivariate analysis identified LMR as an independent prognostic factor of survival in the testing set and in all patients.
Conclusions/significance: Baseline LMR, a surrogate biomarker of the immune microenvironment, is an effective prognostic factor in DLBCL patients treated with R-CHOP therapy. Future prospective studies are required to confirm our findings.