Effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine on chemo-radiotherapy induced leukaemia in patients with lung cancer: a Meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE

To assess the curative effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) on leukopenia induced by chemo-radiotherapy in patients with lung cancer.

METHODS

A comprehensive electronic search in Medline, Embase, the Cochrane Libary database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database (CNKI) and Wanfang Database was conducted up to July 2017. Random-effects model was used to estimate the standardized mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Eleven studies with a total of 957 patients were included in this meta-analysis.

RESULTS

The effectiveness in TCM group was higher than control group [RR = 1.60, 95% CI (1.38, 1.85), P < 0.000 01]. Compare with Western Medicine group, the effectiveness has no significant difference [RR = 0.96, 95% CI (0.82, 1.12), P = 0.57]. The ineffective rate in test group was lower than the control group [RR = 0.30, 95% CI (0.21, 0.42), P < 0.000 01].

CONCLUSION

By meta-regression it was suggested that TCM has curative effect on leukopenia induced by chemo-radiotherapy in patients with lung cancer, but by the influence of number and quality of researches, publication bias, more evidence from high quality studies, and larger cohorts for observational trials are needed.