A multiple treatments meta-analysis of a response to the first-line treatment of the chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Abstract

The chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common blood cancer in adult patients. We performed a multiple treatments meta-analysis using the evidence found in reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) identified in the PubMed database to compare a response to available firstline treatments of CLL. Twenty three trials involving 7,507 patients were included in the analysis comparing the complete remission (CR) and the partial remission (PR) rates of different therapy options. A Bayesian framework was applied using a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo technique. Chlorambucil was considered to be the reference treatment. All the analyzed treatments ensured higher CR and PR than the reference treatment. The obtained results suggest that bendamustine has the highest probability of being the most efficacious treatment in terms of CR and PR in patients with previously untreated CLL.