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 K aplan‐ M eier 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 C ox'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.