Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in dogs with septic peritonitis
By Hodgson, Natasha et al.·Published in Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association·2018·From the College of Veterinary Medicine, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Utility and Prognostic Significance of Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio in Dogs with Septic Peritonitis.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with severe abdominal infections (septic peritonitis) was studied to see if a blood test measuring the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) could help identify their condition. While an NLR of 6 or higher was found to be a good indicator of systemic inflammation, it did not effectively differentiate between septic and nonseptic issues. Additionally, the NLR did not predict how long the dogs would need to stay in the hospital or their chances of recovery. Overall, the NLR is not currently a reliable tool for diagnosing or predicting outcomes in dogs with these serious health problems.
People also search for: dog septic peritonitis symptoms · neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in dogs · dog abdominal infection treatment
Abstract
Systemic inflammation is known to cause WBC abnormalities, specifically neutrophilia and lymphopenia. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a simple and affordable biomarker that has been used in human clinical settings of sepsis but has not been investigated in veterinary species. We evaluated NLR in dogs with septic and nonseptic systemic inflammatory diseases and compared with a healthy dog population. An NLR ≥6 had an 84.39% sensitivity and 86.95% specificity to identify dogs with systemic inflammatory states; however, no ratio distinguished septic and nonseptic causes. The NLR was not associated with length of hospitalization, morbidity based on the acute patient physiologic laboratory evaluation scoring system, or mortality. The disassociation may be due to the retrospective nature of the study, including a restricted population size and acquisition of only a one-time blood sample. NLR is currently of limited use for diagnosis and prognosis in systemic inflammatory states in dogs, and larger, prospective studies are necessary to further evaluate NLR.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30272478/