Effect of sodium cantharidinate/vitamin B6 injection on survival, liver function, immune function, and quality of life in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Background: Sodium cantharidinate/vitamin B6 (SC/VB6) injection, a famous insect-derived traditional Chinese medicine preparation, has been widely applied as a promising adjunctive drug for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, its exact clinical efficacy and safety is still not well investigated. In this study, we aimed to summarize the efficacy of SC/VB6 injection on survival, liver function, immune function, and quality of life (QoL) in patients with HCC through the meta-analysis. Methods: All available randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and high-quality prospective cohort studies that investigated the efficacy and safety of SC/VB6 for patients with HCC were searched from ten electronic databases including PubMed, Google Scholar, Cochrane Library, Excerpt Medica Database (Embase), Medline, Web of Science (WOS), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Scientific Journal Database (CSJ), and Wanfang Database. Papers in Chinese or English published from January 2000 to July 2020 will be included without any restrictions. Study selection and data extraction will be performed independently by 2 researchers. The clinical outcomes including overall survival (OS), QoL, liver function, immune function, and adverse events, were systematically evaluated. Review Manager 5.3 and Stata 14.0 were used for data analysis, and the quality of the clinical trials was also evaluated. Results: The results of this study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal, and provide a helpful evidence for clinicians to formulate the best postoperative adjuvant treatment strategy for HCC patients. Conclusion: Our study will draw an objective conclusion of the efficacy of SC/VB6 on survival, liver function, immune function, and QoL in patients with HCC. INPLASY registration number: INPLASY202070121.

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“…Clinical studies have shown that SCA combined with hepatic artery perfusion have achieved significant efficacy in the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ( 16 ), and SCA injection was also approved by the China Food and Drug Administration in 2013 for HCC ( 17 ). Recent clinical ( 18 – 21 , 31 – 34 ) observations have found that SCA combined with chemotherapy exerted a significant synergistic effect in the treatment of esophageal, gastric, pancreatic and cervical cancer, osteosarcoma and other solid tumors, without increasing the incidence of adverse events.…”

“…The anticancer effects of SCA are mainly mediated by restricting cell cycle progression from the S phase to G/M phase in cancer cells, thereby inhibiting cell proliferation and inducing cell apoptosis, similar to the action of cytotoxic drugs ( 15 ). Clinical studies have shown that SCA combined with hepatic artery perfusion have achieved significant efficacy in the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ( 16 ), and SCA injection was also approved by the China Food and Drug Administration in 2013 for HCC ( 17 ). Recent clinical observations have found that SCA combined with chemotherapy exerted a significant synergistic effect in the treatment of esophageal, gastric, pancreatic and cervical cancer, osteosarcoma and other solid tumors, without increasing the incidence of adverse events ( 18 – 21 ).…”

Efficacy and safety of Chinese patent medicine (Kang-ai injection) as an adjuvant in the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: a meta-analysis

“… 2020 ; Zhu et al. 2020 ). If publication bias was detected, a trim-and-fill method was applied to coordinate the estimates from unpublished studies and the adjusted results were compared with the original pooled RR (Shi and Lin 2019 ).…”

Clinical efficacy and safety of beraprost sodium in the treatment of nephrotic syndrome: A meta-analysis

“…A preliminary search of the database yielded 262 Chinese and English articles. After removing duplicates, reading titles and abstracts, and detailing the full text, 12 studies [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] with a total of 1200 patients were finalized. Six hundred of them belonged to control group while 600 of them were in the test group (Fig.…”

“…Nine publications [10,12,[14][15][16][17][18][19]21] evaluated 24-hour UTP in the combination and control groups. After a test of heterogeneity (P < .00001, I 2 = 92%), we used a random-effects model.…”