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Effective maNagement of depression among patients witH cANCEr (ENHANCE): A hybrid systematic review and (attempted) network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

2025· review· en· W4410796333 on OpenAlexaff
Maria Pertl, Rahela Beghean, Sonya Collier, Emer Guinan, Garret Monahan, Katie Verling, Emma Wallace, Aisling Walsh, Arunangshu Ghoshal, Emer Galvin, Frank Doyle

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Psychosomatic Research · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicCancer survivorship and care
Canadian institutionsInstitute of Population and Public Health
FundersIrish Cancer Society
KeywordsMeta-analysisRandomized controlled trialDepression (economics)Management of depressionSystematic reviewCancerMEDLINEPsychologyMedicinePsychotherapistAlternative medicineInternal medicineBiologyPathology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Optimal intervention(s) for depression among people with cancer are unknown, as all available approaches have not been compared. This hybrid systematic review aimed to identify the most effective and acceptable intervention(s) using network meta-analysis (NMA). METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of depression interventions among adults with cancer experiencing depressive symptoms were identified from database searches for previous systematic reviews and more recent RCTs. Screening, data extraction, Risk of Bias (RoB2) and Research Integrity Assessment (RIA; for descriptive rather than screening purposes) were performed independently, in duplicate. Primary outcomes were change in depressive symptoms (efficacy/effectiveness) and the rate who discontinued (acceptability). As the planned NMA was not appropriate, a narrative critical synthesis was performed. FINDINGS: 70 RCTs (6831 participants) were included (43 psychotherapy, 14 pharmacotherapy, 8 complementary and alternative medicine, 7 collaborative care, 4 exercise, and 3 combination therapy interventions). No significant differences regarding acceptability were evident. Reliable efficacy/effectiveness comparisons using NMA were not possible due to RoB (44.3 % Some concerns, 54.3 % High RoB). Only 10 RCTs had no integrity concerns. Integrity issues included no pre-registration (n = 56/80 %), insufficient reporting on randomisation (n = 27/38.6 %) and ethics (n = 32/40 %), and questionable effect sizes (n = 26/37 %). The most reliable evidence was for collaborative care. CONCLUSIONS: The literature on depression interventions for people with cancer is at RoB, pointing to an urgent need for high-quality research. Until such evidence is available, treatment decisions should continue to be based on evidence from other patient groups and clinical expertise, though there is some evidence that collaborative care is effective. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42021290145 https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=290145.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.042
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.004
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Meta-epidemiology (broad)
Consensus categoriesMeta-epidemiology (broad)
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.123
Threshold uncertainty score0.999

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0420.004
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0660.011
Bibliometrics0.0020.003
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.090
GPT teacher head0.472
Teacher spread0.382 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.

Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

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".

Quick stats

Citations3
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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