Response to Letter to the Editor Regarding "Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio in Renal Transplant Patients"

We would like to thank Dr. Yao Yu and Dr. Yisen Zhang for their useful comments about our article. First, we did not conclude that the neutrophil-tolymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a suggestive clinical marker for diagnosing certain solid malignancies. The NLR has been reported as a useful systematic inflammatory response marker in malignancies.1,2 In addition, previous investigations have shown that NLR is a useful marker for predicting the prognosis of various malignant diseases, and a higher NLR has been associated with a poorer prognosis.3 Our study concluded that NLR is also influenced by cancer progression in renal transplant patients.4 Second, as Dr. Yao and colleagues mentioned, renal transplant patients in our study received a number of different drugs for controlling organ resection. We therefore showed for the first time the changes over time in NLR in nonmalignant patients receiving steroids and other immunosuppressive drugs postoperatively. We then compared the NLR between the nonmalignant and malignant groups.