Immunity
Neutrophil / Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR)
What This Marker Tells Us
Compares neutrophils, which fight bacterial infections and respond to stress, to lymphocytes, which coordinate adaptive immunity, revealing immune system balance and systemic inflammation.
Why It Matters
Predicts mortality, cardiovascular events, cancer progression, and infection outcomes better than either cell type alone. Elevated NLR indicates inflammatory stress overwhelming adaptive immunity, which is a neutrophils surge while lymphocytes decline. This pattern appears in chronic disease, severe infections, autoimmunity, and aging. NLR captures systemic inflammatory burden independent of CRP, providing complementary information about immune dysregulation driving disease. It's remarkably predictive across diverse conditions.
How to Interpret Your Trends
Low NLR (below 1.0) may suggest excellent immune balance but can indicate bone marrow issues or immunosuppression. Typical NLR (1.0-3.0) reflects balanced innate and adaptive immunity. Elevated NLR (3.0-5.0) indicates increased inflammatory stress and disease risk. High NLR (above 5.0) signals severe inflammation, infection, or physiological stress dramatically increasing mortality and disease progression risk.
What Influences This Marker
Acute infections, surgery, trauma, and intense exercise temporarily elevate NLR. Chronic stress, obesity, metabolic syndrome, smoking, and poor sleep chronically raise NLR. Aging gradually increases NLR. Anti-inflammatory diet, regular moderate exercise, adequate sleep, stress management, and treating underlying inflammation normalize the ratio. Severe illness requires medical attention.
How Your Team Uses It
Your team uses NLR to assess systemic inflammation and immune balance, guiding recovery, training load, and lifestyle interventions. Elevated ratios prompt investigation of stressors, infection, and inflammatory burden. It validates whether interventions reduce systemic inflammation. Trending increases warrant medical evaluation.
Related Signals We Also Review
Absolute neutrophils, absolute lymphocytes, CRP, complete blood count, inflammatory markers, and stress indicators complete the immune and inflammation assessment.