CRP and neoplasm: Pathological downstaging was significantly influenced by the pre-treatment clinical lymph node involvement (p = 0.003) and clinical stage (p = 0.002) whereas age (p = 0.335), sex (p = 0.840), co-morbidities (p = 0.472), BMI (p = 0.632), smoking status (p = 0.461), tumor site (p = 0.099), clinical tumor stage (p = 0.963), tumor grade (p = 0.443), mrCRM (p = 0.442), EMVI (p = 0.999), LDH (p = 0.533), CEA (p = 0.373), CA 19-9 (p = 0.119), as well as pre-treatment CRP (p = 0.634) and post-treatment CRP levels (p = 0.121) were not significantly associated with downstaging.