Astragalus membranaceus (Huang Qi) for cancer-related fatigue A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is one of the most common complications of cancer. The incidence of CRF is higher than 80%. The NCCN describes it as a distressing, persistent, subjective sense of physical, emotional, and/or cognitive tiredness or exhaustion. It exists in cancer treatment and may last for months or even years. CRF seriously impairs patients' quality of life. However, there is still a lack of effective drug treatment. Astragalus can improve patients' fatigue state in the clinical practice of Chinese medicine. There are some studies on the treatment of CRF with Astragalus-containing prescription. However, there is no comprehensive analysis of them. We will perform a meta-analyze on the therapeutic effect of Astragalus-containing prescription for CRF. Methods: We will search China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, Wanfang Database, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and the Cochrane Registry of Controlled Clinical Trials. The information is from the databases' inception to December 15, 2021. According to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, data extraction and processing are carried out. Review Manager 5.4 is used for meta-analysis. Results: We will take the severity of CRF as the primary outcome. Conclusions: We will conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of Astragalus-containing prescriptions in treating CRF.