Spiritual well-being, faith, meaning in life, peace, and purpose in life for cancer-related fatigue: systematic review with meta-analysis and meta-regressions.

BACKGROUND: Cancer-related fatigue is associated with spiritual distress. Spiritual well-being, characterized by the presence of factors such as meaning in life or purpose in life, seems to play an important role in the management of symptoms of cancer. Currently, the number of studies evaluating the association between cancer-related fatigue and spiritual well-being is increasing and no systematic review has been conducted.

AIM: To summarize the association between cancer-related fatigue and spiritual well-being, faith, meaning in life, peace, and purpose in life.

DESIGN: A systematic review with meta-analysis.

DATA SOURCES: The CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, and PubMed databases were searched from inception to 9 October 2023. We considered studies evaluating the cross-sectional or longitudinal association between cancer-related fatigue and the spiritual factors above mentioned. The Joanna Briggs Institute Checklist for Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies and the Quality in Prognosis Studies tool assessed the methodological quality of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, respectively. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system rated the certainty of evidence. Meta-analyses, meta-regressions, subgroup meta-analyses, and sensitivity analyses were conducted.

RESULTS: A total of 13 studies were included and no longitudinal findings were found. One meta-analysis showed that cancer-related fatigue may be negatively correlated with spiritual well-being (r =  - 0.37 (95%CI - 0.44 to - 0.28) p < 0.01). In addition, another meta-analysis found the correlation between cancer-related fatigue and faith was not statistically significant (r =  - 0.25 (95%CI - 0.66 to 0.28) p = 0.36).

CONCLUSIONS: Cancer-related fatigue may be correlated with spiritual well-being. However, the certainty of evidence was very low across the meta-analyzed outcomes.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS: A negative correlation was observed between spiritual well-being and cancer-related fatigue.