Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since May 10, 2021)
Date Submitted: Mar 30, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 30, 2021 - May 10, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Pharmacological interventions for the management of cancer-related fatigue among cancer survivors: systematic review and meta-analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Current guidelines have different recommendations on applying pharmacological interventions for managing cancer-related fatigue (CRF) among cancer survivors.
Objective:
Objective:
This systematic review aims to synthesize clinical evidence on pharmacological interventions for managing CRF.
Methods:
Methods:
Five databases were searched for potential Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from their inception till October 2020. RCTs assessing the effect of pharmacological treatments for CRF among cancer survivors were considered eligible. Clinical significance was determined by comparing the estimated effect with that of minimal important difference (MID). The risk of bias of included RCTs were appraised using the Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized trials 2.
Results:
Results:
A total of 15 RCTs (1238 participants) were included. Majority presented some concerns of bias arising from the randomization process and selection of the reported result. Meta-analysis showed that psychostimulant and wakefulness agents had statistically significant while clinical insignificant effect on the treatment of CRF (pooled weighted mean difference (WMD): 2.8, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.2 to 5.4, I2: 0%, 3 RCTs, MID: 3.0 to 6.0). Three natural products, including Renshen Yangrong Tang (mean difference (MD): -16.1, 95% CI: -8.9 to -23.3, MID: -17.3 to -11.4), Tualang honey (MD: 11.2, 95% CI: 7.1 to 15.3, MID: 3.0 to 6.0) and Shenmai injection plus Peptisorb (MD: -1.6, 95% CI: -2.1 to -1.1, MID: -1.1 to -0.8) demonstrated statistically and clinically significant effect in reducing CRF.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
Existing evidence showed promising effects of three natural products in reducing CRF among cancer survivors. The results from this study need to be further confirmed with well-designed and adequate powered RCTs that use validated instruments for the measurement of CRF. Clinical Trial: The protocol of this systematic review has been registered in PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42018102347).
Citation
The author of this paper has made a PDF available, but requires the user to login, or create an account.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.