Related Experiment Videos
Retrolective studies on the survival of cancer patients treated with mistletoe extracts: a meta-analysis
Thomas Ostermann1, Arndt Büssing
1Center for Integrative Medicine, Department of Health, Witten/Herdecke University, Herdecke, Germany. thomas.ostermann@uni-wh.de
Background:
Studies reveal that patients with cancer are actively seeking supportive treatments and may use distinct coping strategies that might be helpful to extend survival time. In this respect, retrolective studies have been applied to examine the therapeutic potential of adjuvant mistletoe treatment.
Material And Methods:
The databases PubMed, EMBASE, AMED, and CAMbase were used to identify retrolective studies in mistletoe treatment. In addition to a review, we also performed a meta-analysis with respect to cancer patients' survival time by a random effects model. Overall estimates of treatment effects were displayed with a forest plot.
Results:
A total of 17 articles met the inclusion criteria. From these, 10 duplicates and 3 descriptive literature and popular articles had to be removed, leaving 4 retrolective studies on mistletoe preparations and patients' survival conducted between 1985 and 2002, with a total of 3.324 patients (2.454 per protocol) recruited in 17 to 35 German and Swiss hospitals, wards, and private practices. Meta-analysis revealed a moderate overall effect of hazard ratios 0.59 (95% confidence interval 0.50-0.70) in favor of mistletoe treatment.
Discussion:
Although we found a positive treatment effect, there are several methodological limitations with respect to the retrolective study design.
Related Concept Videos
01:21Cancer Survival Analysis
02:49Cancer Therapies
However, cancer treatments can pose several challenges, as therapies used to kill cancer cells are generally also toxic to normal cells. Moreover, cancer cells mutate rapidly and can develop resistance to chemical agents or radiation therapy. Besides, all types of cancer cells may not respond to the same therapy. Some cancer cells respond to one...
02:57Targeted Cancer Therapies
There are several types of targeted therapies against specific...