Pharmacological intervention of traditional Chinese medicine for the quality of life in patients with colorectal cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of various traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) approaches on the quality of life in patients with colorectal cancer. Methods: In this study, we systematically performed the screening of randomized controlled trials from Cochrane Library, Pubmed, Embase, Medline, and Web of Science. The data were extracted by two reviewers independently, and then risk assessment was performed. All the analyses were conducted using Review Manager 5.3. Results: A total of 18 eligible studies containing 1312 patients were included. Experimental group were treated with TCM combined with Western medicine or TCM alone (N = 688) and control group were treated with Western medicine treatment alone (N = 624). The results showed that the recent clinical efficiency between the two groups was not statistically significant (P = 0.06). KPS scores of the experimental group were higher than those in the control group [P < 0.001, WMD = 9.60, 95%CI = (5.62, 13.57)]. The toxicity comparison showed that the occurrence of toxicities, such as leucopenia, thrombocytopenia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and neurotoxicity in the experimental group was lower than that in the control group [P < 0.001, OR = 0.31, 95%CI = (0.19, 0.50)], [P = 0.003, OR = 0.49, 95%CI = (0.31, 0.78)], [P < 0.001, OR = 0.30, 95%CI = (0.16, 0.54)], [P < 0.001, OR = 0.40, 95%CI = (0.27, 0.58)], and [P < 0.001, OR = 0.43, 95%CI = (0.30, 0.61)]. The immunological test comparison demonstrated that the immunological parameters (CD3, CD4, and CD4/CD8) showed higher values in the experimental group than those in the control group [P < 0.001, MD = 5.55, 95%CI = (4.83, 6.28)], [P < 0.0001, MD = 6.75, 95%CI = (5.25, 8.26)], and [P = 0.001, MD = 0.26, 95%CI = (0.10, 0.41)]. Conclusions: TCM did not show significant recent clinical efficiency. However, treatment with TCM showed increase in KPS scores in patients with colorectal cancer, alleviation of toxicity associated with chemotherapy, regulation of autoimmunity, and improvement in the quality of life of patients.