Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is the most common of three vaginal infections that fall under the category known as vaginitis. The other two infections are trichomoniasis, a sexually transmitted disease, and the fungal infection commonly known as a yeast infection.
BV is the least understood and most often ignored or misdiagnosed of these conditions. However, it is gaining more attention as more research shows that untreated BV can lead to significant health complications, including premature delivery, postpartum infections, clinically apparent and subclinical pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), post-surgical complications (after abortion, hysterectomy, cesarean section and other reproductive procedures), increased vulnerability to HIV infection and, possibly, infertility. As many as one-third of pregnant women in the United States have BV.
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.