The association of Raynaud's syndrome with cisplatin-based chemotherapy - a meta-analysis

Background: Vasospastic disorders of the digital circulation such as the Raynaud's syndrome (RS) are known side-effects of treatment of cisplatin-based chemotherapy. The prevalence of RS in patients during treatment with cisplatin-based chemotherapy is not well-defined.

Objective: The objective of this paper was to assess the prevalence of RS in patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy - a meta-analysis of published data was performed.

Material and methods: The PubMed database of the National Library of Medicine and ISI Web of Knowledge was used for studies dealing with RS and patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy. The studies provided sufficient data to estimate the prevalence of RS in patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy. A forest plot was determined by the revealed prevalences. Statistical analysis was based on methods for a random effects meta-analysis and a finite mixture model for proportions. Publication bias was investigated with the linear regression test (Egger's method). A meta-regression was conducted by the year of publication and latitude.

Results: 24 eligible studies, contributing data on 2749 subjects, were included in this meta-analysis. For RS in patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy a pooled prevalence of 24% and 95% CI (0.175, 0.313) was obtained. A mixture model analysis found four latent classes. Statistically, publication bias was not present (p-value 0.74). The meta-regression indicated that the odds ratio increased when the latitude increased, too (p-value 0.011).

Conclusion: Despite some heterogeneity there is a possible indication of an association between RS and patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy.