Trial reportJournal of pineal research2023
Quality-of-life outcomes following topical melatonin application against acute radiation dermatitis in patients with early breast cancer: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.
Trial report in Journal of pineal research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Melatonin in cancer treatment.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Efficacy of Melatonin in Alleviating Radiotherapy-Induced Fatigue, Anxiety, and Depression in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Integrative cancer therapiesPooled it
- Quality-of-life outcomes following topical melatonin application against acute radiation dermatitis in patients with early breast cancer: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.Journal of pineal research · 2023Trial
- Melatonin in Integrative Oncology: Biological Mechanisms, Therapeutic Evidence and Implementation Strategies.Oncology research · 2026Review
- Beyond Sleeping Disorders, the Role of Melatonin in Skin Diseases and Emerging Applications in Dermatology and Topical Therapy.Gels (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Systematic review of the tools and outcomes for the assessment of acute radiation dermatitis severity.Clinical and translational radiation oncology · 2025Review
- DNAzyme hydrogels specifically inhibit the NLRP3 pathway to prevent radiation-induced skin injury in mice.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2025Article
- Review
- Age at first menstruation and clinical breast cancer screening utilization: insights from the 2021 Côte d'Ivoire demographic and health survey.Reproductive health · 2024Article
- Melatonin's Impact on Wound Healing.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Clinical Studies Using Topical Melatonin.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Therapeutic Potential of Melatonin Counteracting Chemotherapy-Induced Toxicity in Breast Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review.Pharmaceutics · 2023Review
- Potential of melatonin to reverse epigenetic aberrations in oral cancer: new findings.EXCLI journal · 2023Review
- Multifunctional Nanoplatform-Mediated Chemo-Photothermal Therapy Combines Immunogenic Cell Death with Checkpoint Blockade to Combat Triple-Negative Breast Cancer and Distant Metastasis.International journal of nanomedicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The aim of this double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study was to investigate whether topical melatonin administered during radiation therapy could increase the quality of life in patients with primary breast cancer. Patients were followed from the first radiation fraction until 3 weeks after the last. The patients applied 1 g of cream to the irradiated area of the skin twice daily, consisting of either 25 mg/g melatonin and 150 mg/g dimethyl sulfoxide, or a placebo cream. Outcomes were the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer's quality-of-life questionnaires for breast cancer (QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23) on the last day of radiation therapy. As a secondary outcome, we evaluated the breast symptom (BS) scores over the entire duration of the trial in a repeated measures linear model. We included 65 patients and had 17 drop-outs, thus totaling 26 and 22 patients in the melatonin and placebo groups, respectively. BS scores on the last day of radiation did not differ between groups (p = .333). However, the linear model analyzing BS for the entire duration showed that melatonin significantly decreased the symptoms (p = .001). There was no difference in the BS score on the last day of radiation, however, we found that the patients in the melatonin group had significantly lower BS scores over the entire duration of the trial.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.