The association between neutropenia and prognosis in stage III colorectal cancer patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy.

Neutropenia during chemotherapy has been reported to be a predictor of better survival in patients with several types of cancer, although there are no reports on stage III colorectal cancer ( CRC). The purpose of this study was to examine the association between neutropenia and prognosis in stage III CRC patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of oral uracil and tegafur ( UFT) plus leucovorin ( LV). We retrospectively analysed 123 patients with stage III CRC who received UFT/ LV as adjuvant chemotherapy. The end-point was disease-free survival ( DFS). Survival curves of the two categories (neutropenia absent vs. present) were estimated using the Kaplan- Meier method and compared by the log-rank test. We estimated the hazard ratio ( HR) for DFS according to neutropenia after adjustment for covariates by multivariate analyses using Cox's regression analysis. A total of 33 (26.8%) patients experienced neutropenia. Patients without neutropenia showed a significantly lower DFS than those with neutropenia (3-year DFS 57.3% vs. 81.2%, P = 0.0213). By multivariate analysis, neutropenia and histological type were independent prognostic factors, with HR of 0.410 (neutropenia absent vs. present, P = 0.045) and 4.793 (well to moderately differentiated vs. poorly differentiated, P = 0.004) respectively. We demonstrated that neutropenia occurring during adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of UFT/ LV may be a prognostic factor of recurrence in stage III CRC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]