BACKGROUND: It is now widely acknowledged that chronic inflammation is closely associated with the process of cancer development. As a simple noninvasive blood-based test, hematological parameters in the routine blood test have been considered as inflammation markers. We aimed to evaluate platelet count (PC), red blood cell distribution width (RDW), white blood cell count (WBC), mean platelet volume (MPV), number of neutrophils/lymphocytes ratio (NLR), and platelet count/lymphocytes ratio (PLR) as surrogate inflammatory markers in breast cancer (BC) patients, and we compared these to those in healthy individuals.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted in Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University from July 2014 to April 2015, including 110 cases of pathologically diagnosed BC patients and 78 cases of healthy females. Retrospective analysis of selected hematological parameters was performed between the 2 groups, as well as assessment of the correlation between these indexes and clinicopathological characteristics of the 110 breast cancer patients.

RESULTS: The mean values of RDW, MPV, NLR, and PLR were significantly higher in BC patients compared to the control group. The level of MPV exhibited positive correlations with lymph node metastasis and the Ki67 proliferation index in preoperative BC patients (P<0.05). Logistic regression analysis further showed that MPV was independently associated with the risk of BC lymph node metastasis (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Hematological parameters of RDW, MPV, NLR, and PLR can be used as an adjuvant tool for the diagnosis of BC. More importantly, the value of MPV can reflect the Ki67 proliferation index before surgery and identify patients with positive lymph node metastasis.

Keywords: Erythrocytes, mean platelet volume