A Meta-Analysis: Intervention Effect of Mind-Body Exercise on Relieving Cancer-Related Fatigue in Breast Cancer Patients

Abstract

Objective. This paper aims to systematically evaluate the intervention effect of mind-body exercise on cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients. Methods. Databases including PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, CNKI, Wanfang Data, and SINOMED were retrieved to collect randomized controlled trials on the effects of mind-body exercise on relieving cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients. The retrieval period started from the founding date of each database to January 6, 2021. Cochrane bias risk assessment tools were used to evaluate the methodological quality assessment of the included literature, and RevMan 5.3 software was used for meta-analyses. Results. 17 pieces of researches in 16 papers were included with a total of 1133 patients. Compared with the control group, mind-body exercise can improve cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients. The combined effect size SMD = 0.59, 95% CI was [0.27, 0.92], p < 0.00001 . Doing Tai Chi for over 40 minutes each time with an exercise cycle of ≤6 weeks can improve cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients more significantly. Sensitivity analysis shows that the combined effect results of the meta-analysis were relatively stable. Conclusion. Mind-body exercise can effectively improve cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients.

Qigong Training Positively Impacts Both Posture and Mood in Breast Cancer Survivors With Persistent Post-surgical Pain: Support for an Embodied Cognition Paradigm

“…Emerging research suggests that levels of fatigue in cancer patients are associated with an array of psychosocial and genetic factors, with underlying biology involving changes in multiple markers of inflammation ( Bower, 2014 ; Berger et al, 2015 ). Multimodal mind-body interventions, including Qigong and Tai Chi, have shown promise for alleviating cancer-related fatigue ( Wayne et al, 2018 ; Liu et al, 2021 ), possibly through their impact on inflammation ( Irwin et al, 2014 , 2015 ; Bower and Irwin, 2016 ; Kinney et al, 2019 ). The evidence for links between posture and fatigue in cancer has not been previously described.…”

Effects of exercise interventions on cancer-related fatigue in breast cancer patients: An overview of systematic reviews

“…The methodological quality of the included reviews was generally low, with only three reviews [40,45,53] rated as high quality and the others rated as low or critically low quality, which indicates that there was not enough reliable evidence to support the effects and safety of exercise for the treatment of CRF in breast cancer patients. This can be explained by the fact that the authors of most of the included studies did not provide a list of excluded studies and reasons for their exclusion, which were evaluated by item 7.…”

“…Regarding the methodological quality of the included SRs/meta-analyses, three reviews [40,45,53] were evaluated as high quality, 21 reviews [23, 24, 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 46-48, 50-52, 54, 56-58, 60-62] were rated as low quality, and the remaining ve reviews [38,42,49,55,59] were assessed as critically low quality. Speci cally, the critical items that had an effect on the quality of the reviews were item 2 (only ve reviews [45,46,50,55,61] were evaluated as "yes" due to registered proposals in the early stage, and the remaining reviews only provided the research methods so they were assessed as "partly yes"), item 4 (whether to search for grey literature and counsel experts in the relevant eld was not mentioned in 18 reviews [23, 24, 36, 37, 39, 43-45, 48-51, 54-57, 59, 60]), and item 7 (apart from three reviews [40,45,53], the list of excluded references and the causes for their exclusion were not provided and illustrated in the other reviews). In addition, non-critical item 10 also affected the methodological quality results since none of the 29 reviews reported the funding of their included RCTs.…”

“…A total of 252 RCTs were included and analyzed across the 29 reviews with a CCA of 3%, indicating a slight overlap. Sixteen reviews [23,24,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] explored the effects of exercise therapy on CRF by including studies with different types of exercise, including aerobic exercise, yoga, resistance exercise, and Pilates. For the other 13 reviews, six [50][51][52][53][54][55] focused on yoga, ve[56-60] on aerobic exercise, and two[61, 62] on tai chi.…”

“…Seventeen reviews [23,24,36,37,39,43,44,46,[50][51][52][53][54][56][57][58], 61] used the Cochrane risk of bias (RoB) criteria. Other reviews were assessed using the Quality Assessment of Controlled Intervention Studies[38], the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services (NOKC) Handbook for Systematic Reviews, [41] Homemade Standard [42] ,the Revised Risk-of-Bias Tool for Randomized Trials (RoB 2.0) [55], Jadad Scores [59],the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS)[60], the Physiotherapy Evidence Databases (PEDro) Scale [40,45,62]and the Joanna Briggs Institute-Critical Appraisal for Randomized Controlled Trials (JBI-MAStARI) tool [47], respectively. Two reviews [48,49] did not describe its methodological quality assessment process.…”