One of the serious drawbacks of chemotherapy is the resultant destruction of many aspects of the immune system along with destruction of various blood cells. In experiments on rodents, it has been shown that melatonin could counteract chemotherapy-induced immune suppression. To test whether this same positive response could be replicated in humans, Dr. Lissoni and colleagues, from the Division of Radiation Oncology, S. Gerardo Hospital, in Milan, Italy, evaluated the role of melatonin given with the chemotherapy. Eighty patients were randomized to receive either the chemotherapy alone, or the chemotherapy with melatonin. Thirty-five of these patients had lung cancer, 31 had breast cancer, and 14 had various gastrointestinal tract tumors. Lung cancer patients were receiving cisplatin, the breast cancer patients were being treated with mitoxantrone, and the patients with gastrointestinal tumors were receiving 5-fluorouracil. The melatonin was given in the evening at a dose of 20 mg.
Read more...
0 Comments:
Post a Comment