RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Is Mistletoe Treatment Beneficial in Invasive Breast Cancer? A New Approach to an Unresolved Problem JF Anticancer Research JO Anticancer Res FD International Institute of Anticancer Research SP 1585 OP 1593 VO 38 IS 3 A1 PETER FRITZ A1 JÜRGEN DIPPON A1 SIMON MÜLLER A1 SVEN GOLETZ A1 CHRISTIAN TRAUTMANN A1 XENOPHON PAPPAS A1 GERMAN OTT A1 HILTRUD BRAUCH A1 MATTHIAS SCHWAB A1 STEFAN WINTER A1 THOMAS MÜRDTER A1 FRIEDHELM BRINKMANN A1 SIMONE FAISST A1 SUSANNE RÖSSLE A1 ANDREAS GERTEIS A1 GODEHARD FRIEDEL YR 2018 UL http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/38/3/1585.abstract AB Background/Aim: In this retrospective study, we compared breast cancer patients treated with and without mistletoe lectin I (ML-I) in addition to standard breast cancer treatment in order to determine a possible effect of this complementary treatment. Patients and Methods: This study included 18,528 patients with invasive breast cancer. Data on additional ML-I treatments were reported for 164 patients. We developed a “similar case” method with a distance measure retrieved from the beta variable in Cox regression to compare these patients, after stage adjustment, with their non-ML-1 treated counterparts in order to answer three hypotheses concerning overall survival, recurrence free survival and life quality. Results: Raw data analysis of an additional ML-I treatment yielded a worse outcome (p=0.02) for patients with ML treatment, possibly due to a bias inherent in the ML-I-treated patients. Using the “similar case” method (a case-based reasoning approach) we could not confirm this harm for patients using ML-I. Analysis of life quality data did not demonstrate reliable differences between patients treated with ML-I treatment and those without proven ML-I treatment. Conclusion: Based on a “similar case” model we did not observe any differences in the overall survival (OS), recurrence-free survival (RFS), and quality of life data between breast cancer patients with standard treatment and those who in addition to standard treatment received ML-I treatment.