Effectiveness and safety of chemotherapy combined with immunomodulatory therapies for multiple myeloma: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Multiple myeloma (MM) is considered one of the prevalent malignant plasma cell diseases affecting people. In essence, maintenance treatment is valuable for prolonging the survival time of patients experiencing MM. The majority of the currently used treatment protocols for MM are founded on a combination of chemotherapy and immunomodulatory drugs, of which immunomodulatory drugs seems to be one of the most active drugs. However, in the literature, chemotherapy combined with immunomodulatory therapies have not been unambiguously proven. To systematically appraise and synthesize these results, the present investigation will evaluate whether combining chemotherapy with immunomodulatory therapies an effective and safe approach to treating patients with MM. METHODS: Two authors relied in 7 different databases: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, WanFang Database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and for studies on chemotherapy's effectiveness when combined with immunomodulatory therapies. The authors only considered studies published up to December 16, 2021 and only those written in English or Chinese. They will also carry out selection of studies, extraction of data, along with assessing risk of bias. Besides, they will also use RevMan V.5.3 to conduct data synthesis. They will establish heterogeneity using the I(2) test. At the same time, the authors will evaluate publication bias by making a funnel plot and conducting the Begg as well as Egger tests. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The present study will not necessitate ethics approval since it will be funded on already published works. OSF REGISTRATION NUMBER: 10.17605/OSF.IO/X7DE4.