Assessment of indomethacin oral spray for the treatment of oropharyngeal mucositis-induced pain during anticancer therapy.

PURPOSE: The efficacy and safety of indomethacin (IM) oral spray (OS) as a pain control therapy for oropharyngeal mucositis due to anticancer chemo- and radiotherapy were assessed in patients with head and neck carcinomas and haematological tumours. METHOD: We observed 35 patients (male/female, 20/15; 53 ± 17 years) with oropharyngeal mucositis who were treated with IM-OS preparation for pain relief at University of Tsukuba Hospital, Japan. Analgesic effects were assessed using the six-grade face scale for pain in 28 patients at the start of IM oral spray treatment. Systemic exposure was assessed by determining urinary excretions of IM in seven patients. RESULTS: Pain relief was achieved in 26 (93%) patients at 25 (5-60) min after applying the IM-OS preparation (15.6 ± 3.4 µg/kg) and analgesic effects were maintained for 120 (10-360) min. The pain was significantly decreased after using the spray (3.6 ± 0.7 vs. 2.4 ± 0.9, p < 0.01). Moreover, urinary IM excretion rates after applying the IM spray preparation were 1.8 ± 0.8% of the IM oral spray dose (130.5 ± 77.7 µg/kg/day), which was markedly lower than that following oral administration of IM (60%). No adverse events were observed following application of the spray. CONCLUSIONS: The present IM spray is an effective and safe preparation for pain relief and can be used as an alternative therapeutic option for oropharyngeal mucositis in cancer patients.

Assessment of emotional reaction induced by visual stimulation based on cross-correlation between pulse wave transmission time and heart rate in the Mayer wave-band.

Mayer wave (0.1Hz fluctuation) included in heart rate variability and blood pressure variability appears apparently in the resting state. On the other hand, it can be predicted that a strong emotional reaction may affect the relationship between these variabilities. This prediction suggests that the human emotional reaction can be quantified by the maximum correlation coefficient rho/sub max/ between heart rate and blood pressure whose frequency components are limited to the Mayer wave-band. However, the conventional method of obtaining rho/sub max/ needs a bulky and expensive device for measuring continuous blood pressure. In this study, a smaller and cheaper device for measuring pulse wave transmission time (PTT) has been developed. This work has shown that the PTT can give rho/sub max/ instead of blood pressure and that rho/sub max/ obtained by the PTT may significantly reflect the emotional reaction on the basis of an experiment using nine healthy subjects with nine self-produced devices in which pictures were presented to the subjects to induce their emotional reactions.