Abstract:
Objective To evaluate the prognostic value of the lung immune prognostic index (LIPI) combined with the prognostic nutritional index (PNI) for predicting immunotherapy response in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Methods A total of 106 patients with NSCLC who received immunotherapy in Zhumadian Central Hospital from January 2022 to December 2023 were selected and assigned into a response group (n=72) and non-response group (n=34) according to their response after immunotherapy. Clinical data, LIPI, and PNI of the two groups were compared to analyze the relationship between LIPI and PNI with clinicopathological features and treatment response and to analyze the predictive value of LIPI and PNI in the immunotherapy response of patients with NSCLC. The precision-recall (PR) curve was used to evaluate combined predictive values.
Results The TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis were significantly different between the two groups (P<0.05). The proportion of patients with good LIPI in the non-response group was lower than that in the response group, the proportion of patients with poor LIPI was higher than that in the response group (P<0.05), and the PNI in the non-response group was lower than that in the response group (P<0.05). LIPI positively correlated with TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and treatment response, whereas PNI negatively correlated with TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and treatment response (P<0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that LIPI and PNI were still significantly correlated with immunotherapy response in patients with NSCLC (P<0.05). The area under the curve (AUC) of the combined prediction of LIPI and PNI was 0.936, which was significantly higher than that of LIPI and PNI alone (P<0.05). The PR curve showed an AUC of 0.852, indicating that the combined prediction had high recall and accuracy rates.
Conclusions LIPI and PNI are closely related to TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and treatment response in patients with NSCLC. The combination of LIPI and PNI has a high reference value for predicting immunotherapy response in patients with NSCLC.