Thymic peptides for treatment of cancer patients
Wolf E, Milazzo S, Boehm K, Zwahlen M, Horneber M. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011; 2011(2):CD003993.
PubMed 21328265 · PMC6481824 · doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003993.pub3
Pools the results of several trials. Only as reliable as the trials it includes.
Where this design sits
- Cells in a dish
- Animals
- Small human report
- Controlled human trial
- Pooled analysis (this study)
- Who or what was studied
- 26 randomised trials; 2,736 adults with cancer receiving chemotherapy, radiotherapy or both
- Design
- Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis (random-effects model); searches ran to February 2010
What it found
Purified thymus extracts (20 trials) did not improve overall survival (risk ratio 1.00; 95% CI 0.79 to 1.25), disease-free survival (0.97; 0.82 to 1.16) or tumour response (1.07; 0.92 to 1.25). For thymosin alpha-1 the pooled survival ratio was 1.21 (95% CI 0.94 to 1.56, P = 0.14), a trend that did not reach statistical significance. The extracts did lower the risk of severe infections during chemotherapy or radiotherapy (0.54; 0.38 to 0.78). Both kinds of product were well tolerated.
What it doesn’t show
Most included trials had at least a moderate risk of bias, and the extract results varied moderately to highly between trials. The authors call the infection result preliminary. Only six trials tested synthetic peptides (thymopentin or thymosin alpha-1), so the thymosin alpha-1 estimate rests on a handful of trials at most. The review covers adults with cancer on standard treatment, so it says nothing about immune support in healthy people or other illnesses, and it does not include trials after February 2010.
Funding and conflicts of interest
The authors certify no affiliation with, or involvement in, any organisation with a direct financial interest in the subject of the review.
Summary written from the study's abstract and checked against PubMed on November 9, 2026. How we check studies. Educational information, not medical advice.
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