Li SG, Liu Y, Zhang XY, Li YM, Shen WB, Zhu SC. Effects of radiotherapy on lymphocytes in patients with middle and lower esophageal cancer and its relationship with prognosis. World J Gastrointest Oncol 2025; 17(7): 108205 [DOI: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i7.108205]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Shu-Chai Zhu, Chief Physician, Department of Radiation Oncology, The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, No. 12 Jiankang Road, Shijiazhuang 050011, Hebei Province, China. hbmuzhusc1965@hebmu.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Shu-Guang Li, Yang Liu, Xue-Yuan Zhang, You-Mei Li, Wen-Bin Shen, Shu-Chai Zhu, Department of Radiation Oncology, The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050011, Hebei Province, China
Author contributions: Zhu SC designed the research study; Zhang XY, Li YM, and Shen WB performed the research; Liu Y and Li SG analyzed the data; and all authors contributed to editorial changes, and read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ethics Committee of the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University (No. 2021ky105) and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shu-Chai Zhu, Chief Physician, Department of Radiation Oncology, The Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University, No. 12 Jiankang Road, Shijiazhuang 050011, Hebei Province, China. hbmuzhusc1965@hebmu.edu.cn
Received: April 15, 2025 Revised: May 12, 2025 Accepted: May 29, 2025 Published online: July 15, 2025 Processing time: 90 Days and 3.8 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Definitive chemoradiotherapy is the standard treatment for locally advanced esophageal cancer. However, radiotherapy (RT) often affects the immune system of patients. One of the possible mechanisms of lymphopenia after RT is that a large number of circulating lymphocytes in the systemic and pulmonary circulation will be killed by more sessions of low-dose radiation. This study showed that there was a relationship between radiation-induced lymphopenia (RIL) and the prognosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients, and identified several possible mechanisms of RT parameters in regulating the lymphocyte count during RT. The combination of tumor clinical stage and RT parameters has a certain predictive value for RIL and patient prognosis.
