Meta-Analysis of Thymosin Therapy for Esophageal Cancer from 18 RCTs

A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis by Tao Sun synthesizes evidence from 18 randomized controlled trials involving 1,272 patients. The study evaluates the efficacy, immune function impact, and safety of thymosin combined with anticancer therapy for esophageal cancer. Results include pooled risk ratios for clinical outcomes and mean differences for immune markers.

Use Cases

• Conducting secondary meta-analyses based on the pooled effect sizes for clinical outcomes like Objective Response Rate and survival rates.
• Assessing treatment safety profiles based on the reported risk ratios for adverse effects like leukopenia and radiation pneumonitis.
• Evaluating immune function modulation based on the reported mean differences for CD3+, CD4+, and NK cell levels.
• Validating meta-analytic conclusions using the provided Trial Sequential Analysis (TSA) and GRADE evidence quality assessments.

Strengths

• Includes data from 18 randomized controlled trials with a total of 1,272 patients.
• Reports specific pooled effect estimates (e.g., RR=1.27 for ORR) with 95% confidence intervals for multiple efficacy and safety outcomes.
• Employs multiple validation methods including sensitivity analysis, publication bias assessment, and Trial Sequential Analysis (TSA).
• Assesses evidence quality using the GRADE system, indicating transparency about result reliability.

Limitations

• The underlying methodological quality of the included RCTs is described as limited, which may affect the robustness of the pooled results.
• A comprehensive safety assessment is limited by a lack of data on thymosin-specific side effects.
• The GRADE assessment indicates the quality of evidence for most outcomes ranges from 'very low' to 'low'.
• Column-level documentation for the source data is absent; field semantics must be inferred from the review document.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials identified from Chinese and English databases.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 06:07:38.