Benefits of weight loss programs for breast cancer survivors: a systematic reviews and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Background Obesity and weight gain have been associated with poor disease-specific and health-related outcomes in breast cancer survivors (BCS). But the benefits of weight loss in managing BCS have not been elucidated. Objective To evaluate the beneficial effects of weight loss programs in randomized controlled trials on BCS. Methods We searched English databases PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, and Chinese databases China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Weipu Information Chinese Periodical Service Platform (VIP), China Biomedical Literature Service System (SinoMed), and Wanfang from the inception to January 2021 and collected randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of weight loss programs for BCS. Two reviewers independently screened the literature, extracted the data, and assessed the risk of bias in the included studies. The data synthesis was performed on RevMan (version 5.3), and the publication bias was calculated with STATA (version 15.1). Results Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis. The current study showed that diet and exercise interventions resulted in significant improvements in body weight (MD = − 4.43 kg, 95%CI: − 6.23 to − 2.63, P