Chemotherapy regimens for advanced pancreatic cancer: a systematic review and network meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Advanced pancreatic cancer confers poor prognosis and treatment advancement has been slow. Recent randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have demonstrated survival benefits for combination therapy compared to gemcitabine alone. However, the comparative benefits and harms of available combination chemotherapy treatments are not clear. We therefore conducted a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis to assess the comparative safety and efficacy of chemotherapy regimens for the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer. METHODS: MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Registry of Clinical trials and abstracts from major scientific meetings were searched for RCTs published from 2002 to 2013. Key outcomes were overall survival (OS), progression free survival (PFS), and safety including grade 3-4 febrile neutropenia, neutropenia, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue and sensory neuropathy. Bayesian network meta-analyses were conducted to calculate survival and safety outcomes using gemcitabine (GEM) as the reference comparator. Effect estimates and 95% credible intervals were calculated for each comparison. Mean ranks and the probability of being best were obtained for each treatment analyzed in the network meta-analysis. RESULTS: The search identified 23 studies involving 19 different treatment regimens and 9,989 patients. FOLFIRINOX, GEM/cisplatin/epirubicin/5FU (PEFG), GEM/NAB-paclitaxel (NAB-P), GEM/erlotinib+/-bevacizumab, GEM/capecitabine, and GEM/oxaliplatin were associated with statistically significant improvements in OS and PFS relative to gemcitabine alone and several other treatments. They were amongst the top ranked for survival outcomes amongst other treatments included. No significant differences were found for other combination chemotherapy treatments. Effect estimates from indirect comparisons matched closely to estimates derived from pairwise comparisons. Overall, combination therapies had greater risk for evaluated grade 3-4 toxicities over gemcitabine alone. CONCLUSIONS: In the absence of head-to-head comparisons, we performed a mixed-treatment analysis to achieve high-quality information on the effectiveness and safety of each treatment. This study suggests that some combination therapies may offer greater benefits in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer than others. To more fully elucidate the comparative benefits and harms of different combination chemotherapy regimens, rigorously conducted comparative studies, or network meta-analysis of patient-level data are required.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.032 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".