Pretreatment C-reactive protein (CRP) levels can be a prognostic marker for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), a Japanese study suggests.
A team at Tokyo Medical and Dental University studied 108 patients with metastatic RCC. Subjects were followed for a median of 18 months. The researchers divided participants into three groups according to CRP kinetics: patients whose pretreatment CRP levels were below 5 mg/L (nonelevated), patients whose pretreatment CRP levels were above 5 and dropped to below 5 at least once during treatment (normalized), and patients whose pretreatment CRP levels were above 5 and never normalized (non-normalized).
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Sixty-one patients (56%) had elevated pretreatment CRP levels; of these, CRP levels normalized during treatment in 30 patients and remained elevated in 31. Overall two-year survival rates for nonelevated, normalized, and non-normalized groups were 69%, 55%, and 4%, respectively. After controlling for confounders, CRP kinetics was a significant predictor for overall survival.
