ArticleEuropean archives of paediatric dentistry : official journal of the European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry2026
The efficacy of transdermal melatonin in dental anxiety in children: a randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Article in European archives of paediatric dentistry : official journal of the European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeDental anxiety, a prevalent barrier to optimum dental care, frequently necessitates pharmacological intervention. Melatonin appears to be a safe anxiolytic in medical settings but remains underexplored in paediatric dental anxiety management. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of transdermal melatonin patches in managing dental anxiety in children undergoing invasive dental treatment.
methods52 children aged 5-7 years undergoing dental treatment requiring infiltration local anaesthesia (LA) were randomly assigned to receive either 2 mg transdermal melatonin patches (n = 26) or placebo patches (n = 26), applied to the forearm 30 min before treatment. Outcomes included physiological parameters (heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (SPB), diastolic blood pressure (DPB), peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2)), and dental anxiety by self-reported Facial Image Scale (FIS). All outcomes were recorded at baseline (T1), post-administration (T2), post-LA (T3), and end of treatment (T4).
resultsTransdermal melatonin did not significantly affect either the physiological parameters or the FIS compared to placebo at any timepoint. Intragroup analysis revealed that melatonin protected against the rise in HR and DBP associated with LA injection observed in the placebo group following LA injection. ANCOVA indicated a moderate, statistically significant effect of melatonin on HR at T3 independent of baseline HR (effect size = 9%, P = 0.033, power = 58%). Melatonin induced a transient increase in SpO₂ noted post-administration (mean difference 0.96%, P = 0.019).
conclusionTransdermal melatonin patches provided modest cardioprotective effects against the haemodynamic stress of dental injections during paediatric dental procedures but did not significantly reduce self-reported dental anxiety.
Indexed as
Identifiers
42758406What 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.