Mind-body therapies adjuvant to chemotherapy improve quality of life and fatigue in top cancers: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background:
Breast, lung and colorectal cancers are 3 of the top 4 most common cancers worldwide. Their treatment with chemotherapy often results in adverse effects on quality of life, fatigue and functional exercise capacity amongst patients. Mind-body therapies, including yoga, Tai chi and Qigong, are commonly used as complementary and alternative therapies in cancer. This meta-analysis evaluates the effects of yoga, Tai chi and Qigong in alleviating the adverse effects of chemotherapy.

Methods:
Various databases were systematically interrogated using specific search terms, returning 1901 manuscripts. Removal of duplicates, irrelevant studies, those lacking available data and applying inclusion/exclusion criteria reduced this number to 9 manuscripts for inclusion in the final meta-analyses. Mean differences were calculated to determine pooled effect sizes using RStudio.

Results:
This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis to demonstrate significant improvements in fatigue for colorectal cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy with a reduction of -1.40 (95 % CI: -2.24 to -0.56; p = 0.001) observed in mind-body therapy intervention groups.

Conclusion:
Yoga, Tai chi and Qigong could all be implemented alongside adjuvant therapies to alleviate the adverse effects on colorectal cancer patient fatigue during chemotherapy treatment.

Review registration:
This systematic review and meta-analysis is registered on InPlasy: registration number INPLASY202390035; doi: https://doi.org/10.37766/inplasy2023.9.0035.

Keywords: Cancer; Fatigue; Functional exercise capacity; Mind-body therapy.

PMID: 38029633 DOI: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2023.101811