Effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Chemotherapy-Induced Myelosuppression and Febrile Neutropenia in Breast Cancer Patients

الملخص EN

Title.

Chemotherapy-induced myelosuppression lowers the quality of life in breast cancer patients and causes many complications.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a widely used complementary and alternative medicine therapies.

Objective.

To study whether TCM can reduce the incidence of chemotherapy-induced leukopenia, neutropenia, and febrile neutropenia (FN) in breast cancer patients.

Methods.

The data were analyzed retrospectively between patients who received TCM treatment (group 1, n=453) and patients who did not receive TCM treatment (group 2, n=359).

Significant risk factors associated with the occurrence of chemotherapy-induced leukopenia, neutropenia, and FN were identified using multivariate analysis.

Propensity score-matched patients were analyzed to adjust for any baseline differences.

Results.

Group 1 patients had a significantly lower rate of chemotherapy-induced severe leukopenia, neutropenia, and FN, compared with group 2 (43% versus 71%, P<0.0001, 72% versus 78%, P=0.005, 6% versus 24%, P<0.0001, resp.).

Multivariate analysis revealed that chemotherapy regimens containing anthracyclines combined with paclitaxel or docetaxel were the most significant predictor.

Subgroup analysis indicated that TCM treatment showed benefit in relieving chemotherapy-induced leukopenia and FN in most chemotherapy regimens.

Conclusions.

TCM treatment could lower the risk of severe chemotherapy-induced leukopenia, neutropenia, and FN in breast cancer patients.