Objective: to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of Huachansu (HCS) injection plus chemotherapy in the treatment of gastric cancer.
Methods: A thorough and systematic retrieval of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) concerning HCS injection for treating gastric cancer was conducted in several electronic databases from inception to May 10, 2018. The quality of the RCTs was assessed by the Cochrane risk of bias tool. And the data about objective remission rate, performance status, adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and other outcomes were extracted and analyzed by Review Manager 5.3 and Stata 13.0 software.
Results: A total of 14 RCTs with 976 participants were involved in the current Meta-analysis. The results suggested that HCS injection combined with chemotherapy was associated with better effects than receiving conventional chemotherapy alone in respect of improving the objective response rate [RR = 1.18, 95% CI (1.03, 1.37), Z = 2.32, P = 0.02], and performance status [RR = 1.84,95% CI (1.43, 2.36), Z = 4.74, P < 0.000 01]. In addition, HCS injection combined with chemotherapy could relieve pain for patients with gastric cancer.
Conclusion: This Meta-analysis revealed that HCS injection plus chemotherapy might more effective than chemotherapy in treating gastric cancer. Nevertheless, more large-scale and rigorously designed RCTs should be performed to validate this finding.
Keywords: Drug therapy; Huachansu injection; Meta-analysi; Randomized controlled trial; Stomach neoplasm.