Pre-adjuvant chemotherapy leukocyte count may predict the outcome for advanced gastric cancer after radical resection

Gastric cancer (GC) has a high morbidity worldwide each year especially in China and advanced GC is well known with poor prognosis, for which surgical resection combine adjuvant chemotherapy is the optimal choice for therapy. Leukocyte is an important index during the treatment for its influence on drugs’ dosage and tolerance. Therefore, peripheral blood leukocyte and its subsets during adjuvant chemotherapy may have great clinical value for predicting prognostic. In this retrospective study, we showed the distribution of white blood cell and its subsets in the baseline period before adjuvant chemotherapy in 399 patients who underwent radical resection for advanced GC from January 1, 2008 to August 31, 2012. We investigated the relationship between leukocyte count and overall survival (OS) as well as disease-free survival (DFS). In these patients, females were more likely to have less white blood cells after operation (P = 0.016). Patients with pre-chemotherapy leukocyte count less than 4 × 109/L got worse DFS (P = 0.028) and OS (P = 0.016). In multivariate analysis, tumor size ≥ 6 cm (P = 0.033), TNM stage IV (P = 0.024), vascular or nerval invasion (P = 0.005) and leukocyte count less than 4.0 × 109/L (P = 0.019) was associated with poor DFS. TNM stage IV (P = 0.008), vascular or nerval invasion (P = 0.001) and lower leukocyte count (P = 0.045) were independent risk factors for poor OS. Taken together, our findings suggest that pre-adjuvant chemotherapy peripheral blood leukocyte count correlates with clinical outcome of patients with advanced GC after radical resection.