Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio as a novel and valuable marker for assessing disease severity in Ulcerative colitis, Multiple sclerosis, and Kawasaki disease: A review

Ulcerative colitis (UC), multiple sclerosis (MS), and Kawasaki disease (KD) are three autoimmune diseases that involve the colon mucosa, myelin of the central nervous system neurons, and vascular epithelium. All these diseases need invasive, expensive, and complex modalities or criteria in order to monitor the disease severity. Recently, the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has been proposed as a valuable, cheap, and easy marker of systemic inflammation. As all the above-mentioned diseases involve neutrophils and lymphocytes as the two major cell lines, it may be applicable to assess their severity according to the NLR. Here, we review the available literature with this regard.