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