Abstract
An observational multicenter cohort study involving 120 patients treated with chemotherapy alone or in combination with pembrolizumab or atezolizumab was conducted. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels were measured after six cycles, and response of tumor was estimated with the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was conducted. IL-6 levels were significantly reduced in the chemo-immunotherapy groups compared with the chemotherapy group (
p
p
< 0.001). Post-treatment IL-6 and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were tested, and both were significant in univariate analysis. However, only post-treatment IL-6 remained independently associated with progressive disease in multivariable analysis. ROC analysis revealed exceptional discriminative performance, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.961, 91.6% sensitivity, and 96.0% specificity. Therefore, post-treatment IL-6 was independently associated with disease progression and may demonstrate a promising biomarker for risk stratification in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).