Neutropenia during
chemotherapy has been reported to be a predictor of better survival in patients with several types of
cancer, although there are no reports on stage III
colorectal cancer (CRC). The purpose of this study was to examine the association between
neutropenia and prognosis in stage III CRC patients receiving
adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of oral
uracil and
tegafur (UFT) plus
leucovorin (LV). We retrospectively analysed 123 patients with stage III CRC who received UFT/LV as
adjuvant chemotherapy. The end-point was disease-free survival (DFS). Survival curves of the two categories (
neutropenia absent vs. present) were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and compared by the log-rank test. We estimated the hazard ratio (HR) for DFS according to
neutropenia after adjustment for covariates by multivariate analyses using Cox's regression analysis. A total of 33 (26.8%) patients experienced
neutropenia. Patients without
neutropenia showed a significantly lower DFS than those with
neutropenia (3-year DFS 57.3% vs. 81.2%, P = 0.0213). By multivariate analysis,
neutropenia and histological type were independent prognostic factors, with HR of 0.410 (
neutropenia absent vs. present, P = 0.045) and 4.793 (well to moderately differentiated vs. poorly differentiated, P = 0.004) respectively. We demonstrated that
neutropenia occurring during
adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of UFT/LV may be a prognostic factor of recurrence in stage III CRC patients.