A narrative review of peripheral blood parameters for urothelial carcinoma treated with systemic antitumor drugs

Background and Objective: The prognosis of advanced urothelial carcinoma (aUC) is poor. To date, the gold standard of treatment for patients with aUC has been cisplatin-based chemotherapy. More recently, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been widely used for such patients, which has led to an improvement in their prognosis. In clinical practice, predicting the effectiveness of antitumor drugs or the prognosis of patients is important for making decisions on treatment strategies. Various parameters obtained from blood tests in the pre-ICI era have been adopted for patients in the ICI era. In this review, we summarize the parameters reflecting the status of aUC patients treated with ICIs based on current evidence. Methods: We conducted a literature search using PubMed and Google Scholar. The publications chosen were all peer-reviewed journals published over an unlimited time period. Key Content and Findings: Numerous inflammatory or nutritional parameters can be obtained from routine blood tests. These reflect malnutrition or systemic inflammation in patients with cancer. As in the pre-ICI era, these parameters are useful for predicting the effectiveness of ICIs and the prognosis of patients treated with ICIs. Conclusions: Various parameters are related to systemic inflammation and malnutrition, and are easily obtained from a routine blood test. Using these parameters from various studies as reference points is useful in making decisions on treatment for aUC.