Trial reportQuality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation2026
EORTC QLQ-C30 symptom components and their functional correlates during adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer: a multivariate analysis. Data from GEICAM/2003-02 study.
Trial report in Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT00129389 (Multicenter Randomized Phase III Trial to Compare 6 FAC Cycles vs 4 FAC Cycles Followed by 8 Weekly Paclitaxel Administrations, as Adjuvant Treatment for Node Negative Operable Breast Cancer Patients), which is not on this map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Multicenter Randomized Phase III Trial to Compare 6 FAC Cycles vs 4 FAC Cycles Followed by 8 Weekly Paclitaxel Administrations, as Adjuvant Treatment for Node Negative Operable Breast Cancer Patients
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeUnderstanding how multiple symptoms jointly impact functioning is essential for interpreting patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in oncology. We aimed to characterize the main dimensions underlying change-from-baseline (CFB) in symptom scores during adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer, and to examine their associations with functional outcomes. PATIENTS AND
methodsWe analyzed EORTC QLQ-C30 CFB scores from 820 patients enrolled in the GEICAM/2003-02 trial. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to summarize correlated symptom changes into a smaller number of components, and graphical LASSO network modelling was applied to explore relationships among Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) domains. Associations between components and functional scales and global health status were assessed using Spearman correlations.
resultsThree components were identified in the pooled sample, explaining 53.6% of the variance: a dominant general symptom burden component, a gastrointestinal component, and a diarrhea-specific component. The general component, primarily defined by fatigue, pain, appetite loss, insomnia, nausea/vomiting and dyspnea, showed consistent negative correlations with all functional scales and global health status. Similar patterns were observed across treatment arms, although gastrointestinal-related components differed. Graphical LASSO identified fatigue as the symptom most strongly connected to functional impairment.
conclusionSymptom changes during chemotherapy are not independent, but follow a multivariate structured pattern in which a general symptom burden, anchored by fatigue, plays a central role in functional decline. These findings suggest that multivariate approaches may provide a complementary exploratory framework for summarizing correlated patterns of treatment-related burden and generating hypotheses regarding PROs. Trial registration number ClinTrials.gov: GEICAM/2003-02: NCT00129389.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.