Fig. 4

Associations between pretreatment NLR and clinical outcomes were analyzed. a NLR at the time of immunotherapy initiation was compared in patients who have demonstrated clinical benefit from pembrolizumab or nivolumab versus patients who have not. Pretreatment NLR was significantly higher in patients who have demonstrated lack of clinical benefit. Data is represented as box-and-whisker plot. *P < 0.05 by unpaired Student’s t-test. To compare Kaplan-Meier curves for time-to-progression analysis, the patient cohorts were stratified by NLR of 7 as described in the methods section. Patients with NLR ≥ 7 were associated with significantly shorter PFS in both the (b) primary cohort analysis and (c) expanded cohort analysis. *P < 0.05, ***P < 0.005 by Wilcoxon test