Hematological and blood biochemical differences in dogs with mammary dysplasia/ hyperplasia, bening or malignant mammary tumors

Mammary tumors are the most common neoplasms in female dogs. There are many factors involved in the development of mammary tumors. Recently, there is an increasing need for cost-effective prognostic markers derived from hematological parameters in dogs and cats with cancer. Our study was designed as a retrospective study to determine the significance of hematologic parameters in female dogs bearing with mammary tumors. For this, hematocrit (HCT), blood biochemistry, and some clinical and histopathological findings of female dogs with mammary gland masses that had undergone mastectomy (n = 100) were included in our study. Mammary masses in female dogs are divided into five histopathological groups: Group 1 (malignant epithelial tumors), Group 2 (malignant mesenchymal tumors), Group 3 (malignant mixed tumors), Group 4 (benign tumors) and Group 5 (hyperplasia/dysplasia). The following hematologic parameters were evaluated: leukocytes (WBC), neutrophils (NEU), lymphocytes (LYM), monocytes (MON), eosinophils (EOS), basophils (BAS), erythrocytes (RBC), hemoglobin (HGB), hematocrit (HCT), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), red blood cell distribution width (RDW), platelets (PLT),mean platelet volume (MPV), and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR). Biochemical analysis included blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine (CRE), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), glucose (GLU), total protein (TP), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and albumin/globulin ratio (AGR). Comparisons were made between the groups according to histopathological tumor types. The most common histopathological type after mastectomy is malignant epithelial tumors (72%). For TP, a difference was found between G1 and G5 (p 0.05). For MON, a difference was found between G1 and G5, between G2 and G5, between G3 and G5, between G1 and G4, between G3 and G4 (p 0.05). For PLT, a difference was found between G2-G3 and G3-G4 (p 0.05). Although NLR was different between the groups and gets higher values with malignancy no statistical significance was found between the groups (p 0.05). While our study revealed some potential associations between hematologic parameters and histopathological tumor types, further studies with a larger and more diverse canine population are needed before these parameters can be reliably used as prognostic markers in female dogs with mammary masses.