Association between clinical characteristics and PNI, NLR and PLR in KD
The present study revealed the association between the inflammation-based biomarkers and clinical features of KD, which are all indicators of IVIG resistance (Table 2). The results revealed that pretreatment PNI was significantly associated with age (p =0.0448), PLT (p =0.0169) and serum sodium levels (p =0.0163). The patients with low PNI tended to exhibit higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) (p <0.0001) and a higher the incidence of IVIG resistance (p =0.0042) when compared with the patients with high PNI. Furthermore, high NLR was significantly associated with low age (p =0.0285), platelet (p =0.0157) and serum sodium levels (p =0.0086). A positive association between NLR and CRP (p =0.0032), and the incidence of IVIG resistance (p =0.0006) was detected in the present study. Nevertheless, no significant associations were observed between the two groups in terms of gender and total bilirubin level. In addition, high PLR has been demonstrated to be associated with high levels of CRP (p =0.0001), higher incidence of IVIG resistance (p =0.0116) and with low age (p =0.0232). Nevertheless, no great differences between PLR and gender, total bilirubin, PLT and serum sodium levels were observed.
Notably, PNI was negatively correlated with NLR (r =-0.4216;p <0.0001) and PLR (r =-0.4669,p <0.0001) (Fig. 2). Thus, the results of the present study suggested that PNI was associated with other inflammatory biomarkers in KD.