Preoperative lymphocyte‑albumin‑monocyte index as an inflammation‑ and nutrition‑based predictor of overall survival in triple‑negative breast cancer: A retrospective cohort study

Serum albumin (ALB) and the lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) are established inflammation- and nutrition-related biomarkers associated with tumor progression. Their combined prognostic value in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has not been fully defined. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop and demonstrate a lymphocyte-albumin-monocyte index (LANI) that integrates ALB and LMR for prognostic assessment in TNBC. A retrospective cohort of 166 surgically treated patients with TNBC was analyzed and divided into training (n=116) and validation (n=50) cohorts. Receiver operating characteristic analysis yielded optimal thresholds of 39.35 g/l for ALB and 2.526 for LMR, which were rounded to clinical cutoffs of 40 g/l and 2.97. Patients were categorized into three LANI groups, namely LANI=0 (ALB