Dexamethasone (DM) for cancer-related fatigue: A double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
9002 Background: Cancer-related-fatigue (CRF) is the most common and distressing symptoms in patients with advanced cancer. Currently, there is no standard treatment for CRF. Although corticosteroids have been used in the treatment of CRF, there are no well-powered placebo-controlled trials that used a validated CRF outcome measure. The primary objective of this prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study is to compare the effect of DM versus placebo on CRF. Methods: Advanced cancer patients with fatigue ≥ 4/10 on the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) and at least 2 other CRF-related symptoms (pain, nausea, appetite, depression, anxiety or sleep disturbance ≥ 4/10), normal cognition, no infections and hemoglobin ≥ 9 g/L were eligible for enrollment. Patients were randomized to either receive dexamethasone 4 mg orally twice a day for 15 days (primary end point) or matching placebo. The primary outcome was the day 15 change in Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness-Fatigue (FACIT-F) subscale scores. Differences in the group means (normal distribution) were analyzed using the two-sample t-test. Results: In 83 evaluable patients (43 DM and 40 placebo), median age was 60 years, 61% were white, and 53% were female. There was no difference in the demographics and fatigue (FACIT-F subscale) between DM and placebo groups except for sex (p=0.02). The mean (SD) FACIT-F subscores at baseline and at day 15 for DM were 18 (11) and 27 (11) (p<0.001) and for placebo were 21 (9) and 24 (12) (p=0.06), respectively. Mean improvement in FACIT-F subscale was significantly higher in the DM group compared to placebo (9.6 (11) vs. 3.1 (9.7), p=0.005). We found a significant difference in ESAS physical distress (p=0.02), but no differences in ESAS overall symptom distress (p=0.11) and ESAS psychological distress (P=0.88) between DM and placebo. There were insignificantly higher numbers of grade ≥3 toxicities in patients who received DM than in patients who received placebo (20/42 vs. 18/47, p=0.37). Conclusions: Dexamethasone was more effective than placebo in reducing CRF in patients with advanced cancer. Long-term safety studies are needed.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.001 |
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".