The Effect of ShenQi FuZheng Injection in Combination with Chemotherapy versus Chemotherapy Alone on the Improvement of Efficacy and Immune Function in Patients with Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of ShenQi FuZheng Injection (SFI) on cellular immunity and clinical efficacy in patients with advanced non small cell lung cancer(NSCLC) when combined with chemotherapy. METHODS Electronic databases including EMBASE, PUBMED, the conference proceedings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Cochrane, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Biological Medical disc(CBM) were searched, until July, 2015. The randomized controlled clinical studies reporting results of efficacy and immune function were collected according to the inclusion criteria. Cochrane handbook 5.1.0 was applied to assess the quality of included trials and Revman 5 software was used for data analysis. RESULTS Fifteen studies including 1006 cases of advanced NSCLC were included based on the inclusion criteria. The results of meta-analysis showed that there were significant differences in percentages of CD3+ cells (SMD = 13.48; 95%CI: 8.11-18.85; p<0.01), CD4+ cells (SMD = 10.78; 95%CI, 6.38-15.18; p<0.01), NK [WMD = 8.59, 95% CI(3.97, 13.21), p = 0.003], and ratio of CD4+/ CD8+ (SMD = 0.32; 95%: 0.28-0.36; p<0.01) between SFI combination group and control group, whereas the difference was not significant in CD8+ (SMD = -1.44; 95%CI, -4.53-1.65; p = 0.36). Funnel plot, Begg's rank correlation test and Egger's linear regression analysis indicated that there was significant publication bias across studies. CONCLUSION SFI is effective to improve the efficacy of chemotherpay and function of cellular immunity in NSCLC patients, however, high quality RCTs are needed to further confirm the findings.