Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy and Adverse Reactions of Ibrutinib in the Treatment of Refractory/Relapsed Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Objective: Therapeutic results of relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma (R/R MCL) are very disappointing at present, and there is no standard effective treatment regimen. Ibrutinib has been proved to be effective for R/R MCL, however, the sample size of these individual clinical studies was relatively small. Hence, current clinical experience in its usage is still limited. It is necessary to systematically analyze the efficacy and adverse reactions of ibrutinib in the treatment of R/R MCL. Methods: The PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases were searched using English search terms, mantle cell lymphoma, MCL, and ibrutinib; the VIP, Wanfang, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases were searched using the Chinese search terms, ibrutinib and mantle cell lymphoma. The extracted data were subjected to meta-analysis using R software to deduce the effective rate and occurrence rate of serious adverse reactions. Results: A total of 12 cohort studies were included in this analysis. The results demonstrated that ibrutinib could be an efficient therapy regimen for R/R MCL patients and the effect of combination therapy was better than that of single-drug therapy. During the treatment with ibrutinib, the adverse reactions mainly included hematological toxicity, infection, atrial fibrillation, and bleeding. Discussion: Our analysis showed ibrutinib is an optimal second-line treatment for R/R MCL, and the combination therapy is more effective than monotherapy as it was well-tolerated by the patients. Therefore, the combination of other drugs for R/R MCL should be considered for patients with poor efficacy of ibrutinib alone or relapse after treatment.