Modern pathology : an official journal of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, Inc
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Several lines of evidence indicate that neutrophils act nonspecifically against tumor cells. The correlation between tumor-infiltrating neutrophils (TINs) and clinicopathological features remains unclear and deserves to be investigated. To analyze the prognostic influence of TINs in gastric carcinoma, the authors selected 273 patients with advanced gastric carcinoma who underwent gastrectomy at Cremona Hospital (Lombardia, Italy) between 1990 and 1995 and followed them for a period of 5 years. ⋯ These results suggest that women appear to have a better prognosis than men in advanced gastric carcinoma. Gender differences in some host defense mechanisms and particularly in neutrophil function may be responsible for this event. Confirmation of these findings would give valuable insights about host reaction to gastric cancer growth and, ultimately, possibly would have implications regarding the identification of low-risk patients who could be spared adjuvant therapy.