Jet lag drug could lessen chemo pain
A drug that relieves jet lag could also be used to prevent one of the most debilitating side effects of chemotherapy, scientists have announced.
Researchers at Edinburgh University are commencing clinical trials of melatonin on cancer patients after laboratory experiments showed it significantly improved chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain.
The side-effect, which causes tingling pain sensations, particularly in the fingers, affects around 70 per cent of the roughly 100,000 patients treated with chemotherapy each year.
This is an area of real unmet need, where new therapies are urgently required
Professor Lesley Colvin, University of Edinburgh
For many, it means they cannot complete their cancer treatment, or are forced to slow it down.
A study on rats showed that giving melatonin to patients prior to chemotherapy not only limited pain, but also reduced damage caused by the treatment to vital parts of the nerve cells called mitochondria.
The melatonin treatment was found not to interfere with the beneficial anticancer effects of the chemotherapy in human breast and ovarian cancer cells used in the rodent experiment.
Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that controls sleeping patterns, although synthetic versions can be produced in a laboratory.
It can be used to alleviate sleep disturbance but is not available in the UK without prescription.
“These results are promising, especially as melatonin treatment is known to be safe in other conditions,” said Professor Helen Galley, from the University of Aberdeen, who co-led the study.”
Professor Lesley Colvin, a pain specialist at the University of Edinburgh, which also took part in the research, said: “This is an area of real unmet need, where new therapies are urgently required.”
The findings were published in the Journal of Pineal Research.
