Eribulin's Impact on Blood Cell Dynamics

This study focussed on the effect of eribulin after its initiation irrespective of whether it was continued or discontinued. Complete blood counts -including white blood cells, neutrophils and lymphocytes - were evaluated at four time points, which were determined based on the time since the eribulin initiation date (the index date). Practically, the lab data closest to the defined time points (within 2 weeks) were used for analysis. The first time point is baseline, just prior to the initial eribulin dose. At CMUH, a complete blood count is usually obtained at the beginning of each planed treatment cycle as part of the routine clinical practice. The subsequent three time points were at 1, 3 and 6 months after eribulin initiation. The NLR was calculated by dividing the number of neutrophils by the number of lymphocytes. The ALC and NLR were classified as high or low using a cut-off of 1000/µl for the ALC and 3 for the NLR; these values were chosen based on the available studies [5 (link), 14 (link), 22 (link), 23 (link)]. The trends in the ALC and NLR 1, 3 and 6 months after eribulin initiation were categorised as decreasing if the ALC and NLR were lower compared with baseline and non-decreasing (including increasing) if they were equal or higher compared with baseline.