A new peer-reviewed study suggests that the balance between neutrophils and lymphocytes measured at the stoma site may carry prognostic information for people with colorectal cancer.
Researchers retrospectively analysed clinical records from 83 patients with colorectal cancer and compared them with 28 people without cancer. They focused on the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, or NLR, at the stoma site. NLR is an inflammation-related measure calculated from two types of white blood cells.
What the researchers found
The colorectal cancer group had a significantly higher NLR at the stoma site than the non-cancer control group, with the difference reaching statistical significance at P < 0.05.
Within the colorectal cancer group, a higher stoma-site NLR was also significantly associated with overall survival, again at P < 0.05. The researchers therefore propose that this local immune-cell ratio could potentially contribute to prognostic assessment.
The finding is notable because NLR is more commonly considered as a systemic blood-based inflammatory marker. Measuring the ratio at the stoma site instead examines the local inflammatory environment in patients who have undergone stoma formation.
How the study was conducted
The study used a retrospective design and examined existing clinical records. The sample included 83 patients with colorectal cancer and 28 non-cancer controls. Researchers compared stoma-site NLR between the groups and then examined whether the measure was related to prognosis among the cancer patients.
The research was conducted by investigators affiliated with the First People’s Hospital of Lianyungang and related medical institutions in China. The study received ethics approval, and the requirement for informed consent was waived because the analysis was retrospective.
Why the finding matters
Colorectal cancer outcomes vary substantially between patients, creating an ongoing need for practical markers that can help clinicians estimate prognosis. Inflammatory and immune responses are already known to be closely connected with cancer progression, making ratios derived from immune cells a continuing area of investigation.
If the stoma-site association is reproduced in larger and more diverse patient groups, it could provide another source of information for understanding a patient’s inflammatory state and prognosis. However, the present results do not establish that NLR itself causes poorer outcomes.
Important limitations
The authors describe the findings as preliminary. The study was retrospective, which means it can identify associations but cannot establish cause and effect. The colorectal cancer group contained 83 patients, while the comparison group contained 28 people, so the results require validation in larger prospective studies.
The findings also concern a specific clinical population with stomas and should not automatically be generalised to every person with colorectal cancer. Future research will need to determine how reproducible the measure is, whether it adds predictive value beyond established clinical factors, and whether clinically useful thresholds can be validated.
Source Information
Study: Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio at stoma site predicts colorectal cancer prognosis
Authors: Tong Cheng, Chenglong Gao, Wanneng He and Zengtao Bao
Journal: Scientific Reports
Published: 24 September 2026
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-72668-8
Study design: Retrospective analysis of 83 colorectal cancer patients and 28 non-cancer controls
