Nutritional status as prognostic factor of advanced oesophageal cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Malnutrition is reported in 60%-85% of oesophageal cancer (EC) patients. Indicators commonly used in the clinic to evaluate the nutritional status of patients include haemoglobin (Hb), body mass index (BMI), albumin (ALB), prognostic nutritional index (PNI), prealbumin (PAB), transferrin (TRF), and NRS2002 scores. In this study, we explored the associations between pretreatment nutrition-related indicators and clinical outcomes in patients with advanced EC who were treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). METHODS: The general clinical data of patients, NRS2002 scores, PNI, and levels of BMI, ALB, Hb, PAB, and TRF at baseline were collected. Categorical variables were compared using the chi-squared test. The chi-squared test was used to compare the differences in the objective response rate (ORR) and the disease control rate (DCR) between groups. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to compute the survival curves. Cox proportional hazard regression was performed to evaluate factors independently associated with OS and PFS. RESULT: Of the 1340 patients diagnosed with EC at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital between June 2018 and September 2022, 354 patients with advanced EC who underwent ICI therapy were enrolled. In total, the ORR and DCR were 38.1% and 82.2%, respectively. A significantly worse response to ICI therapy was observed in the Hb-L group and the BMI-L group. The median PFS and OS among all enrolled patients were 6.0 months and 13.3 months, respectively. PFS was significantly associated with pretreatment levels of Hb, ALB, and PAB. OS was significantly associated with pretreatment levels of Hb, ALB, BMI, PNI, TRF, and PAB. The multivariate analysis further demonstrated that Hb was an independent prognostic factor of both OS (P = 0.004) and PFS (P = 0.047), and ALB was an independent prognostic factor of OS (P = 0.045). No independent relevance for OS or PFS was found in the BMI, PNI, TRF, or PAB groups. In this study, the NRS2002 scores was not significantly correlated with the therapeutic response or prognosis of ICI therapy. CONCLUSION: Our study indicated the relevance of nutritional status to the efficacy and prognosis of advanced EC patients treated with ICIs. The pretreatment levels of Hb and BMI were significantly related to therapeutic response. The pretreatment levels of Hb, BMI, ALB, PAB, TRF, and PNI were partially associated with survival. Notably, Hb is not only related to therapeutic response but is also an independent prognostic indicator of survival outcomes.