New Tool for Controlling Mouth Sores

High dose chemotherapy and radiation given to patients before their transplant often cause painful mouth and throat sores. The sores typically appear 4-8 days after treatment, and can make eating difficult or impossible.

A new tool is on the market to protect against painful mouth sores. Caphosol®, when used in combination with fluoride treatments, reduces the frequency, intensity and duration of mouth and throat sores in patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation prior to transplant, according to a study published in Bone Marrow Transplantation.1

The study, conducted at Tufts New England Medical center, randomly assigned 95 stem cell transplant patients to receive either fluoride treatments alone, or fluoride treatments with Caphosol® prior to transplant. Most patients had leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, or myelodysplasia.  Little over half underwent an autologous stem cell transplant (using their own stem cells) and the remainder had an allogeneic transplant (using donor stem cells).

Patients in the Caphosol® group experienced, on average, 3.5 fewer days of mouth sores (mucositis) than the group receiving fluoride treatments alone. The Caphosol® group reported nearly five fewer days of mucositis-related pain than the fluoride-only group.  The amount of morphine required by patients to control the pain was significantly less in the Caphosol® group than in the fluoride-only group (35.54 mg versus 122.78 mg) and some in the Caphosol® group required no morphine at all.

Caphosol® is an oral rinse with no known adverse side effects or drug interactions. The study authors acknowledge that the data is derived from a relatively small number of patients with various diseases, who were treated with different combinations of chemotherapy and radiation. They note, however, that the study results are similar to other prior studies of Caphosol®.

1 Papas, A et al: A prospective, randomized trial for the prevention of mucositis in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, Bone Marrow Transplantation (2003) 31, 705–712

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