Prognostic role of pretreatment blood lymphocyte count in patients with solid tumors: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Table 3 Subgroup analysis of the meta-analysis for PFS

Subgroup	No. of studies	No. of patients	Pooled HR	95% CI	P	Heterogeneity test		Statistical method
Subgroup	No. of studies	No. of patients	Pooled HR	95% CI	P	I²	P	Statistical method
Analysis of survival
Multivariate	9 [1, 7, 29, 35, 41, 44,45,46,47]	2487	1.30	1.14–1.47	< 0.001	37.1%	0.080	Fixed
Univariate	5 [11, 22, 28, 34, 36]	2660	1.19	1.01–1.40	0.036	0.0%	0.441	Fixed
Cut-off value
≤ 1.0	5 [1, 7, 41, 45, 46]	1187	1.55	1.32–1.82	< 0.001	0.0%	0.617	Fixed
> 1.0	9 [11, 22, 28, 29, 34,35,36, 44, 47]	3960	1.11	0.99–1.24	0.053	0.0%	0.643	Fixed
Disease site
Nasopharyngeal cancer	3 [22, 29, 44]	2074	1.31	1.12–1.53	0.001	0.0%	0.444	Fixed
Breast cancer	2 [1, 45]	482	1.76	1.42–2.20	< 0.001	0.0%	0.820	Fixed
Renal cancer	2 [11, 41]	332	1.15	0.84–1.59	0.36	0.0%	0.690	Fixed
Disease stage
Non metastatic	6 [7, 28, 29, 34, 44, 46]	2814	1.34	1.14–1.56	< 0.001	0.0%	0.612	Fixed
Metastatic	3 [1, 41, 45]	856	1.54	1.30–1.84	< 0.001	15.2%	0.316	Fixed
Mixed	5 [11, 22, 35, 36, 47]	1477	1.10	0.97–1.24	0.138	0.0%	0.528	Fixed
Region
Asian(China, Korea, Japan)	7 [22, 28, 29, 34, 35, 44, 47]	3408	1.20	1.07–1.34	0.002	20.2%	0.257	Fixed
Non Asian(America, France, Italy)	7 [1, 7, 11, 36, 41, 45, 46]	1739	1.37	1.20–1.55	< 0.001	31.6%	0.176	Fixed

ISSN: 1475-2867