Wheatgrass extract as a topical skin agent for acute radiation skin toxicity in breast radiation therapy: a randomised controlled trial

Journal of the Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, Sept, 2006 by Janelle Wheat, Geoff Currie, Kristine Coulter

Nonetheless, this pilot study demonstrated a statistically significant decrease in the time to peak ONS rating in the experimental group. This means that the wheatgrass extract delays the severity of acute radiation skin toxicity.

This is particularly important to those patients in whom the severity and early onset of acute radiation skin toxicity limit patient compliance and, thus, impede a patient's ability to complete their treatment regime. This pilot study provides sufficient evidence of a role for wheatgrass in management of acute radiation skin toxicity to justify a larger multi-centre randomised trial.

Moreover, wheatgrass was shown to provide improved QOL in breast cancer irradiation. The improved QOL may be related to the trend towards delayed time to peak incidence in the wheatgrass group. The strength of the QOL relationship, however, would appear to be greater than that of the delayed time to peak ONS. This may provide an argument that improved QOL is both related to delayed severity of acute radiation skin toxicity and independently achieved due to improved management of skin morbidity. This may, however, simply reflect the SQLI offering a more telling tool for evaluation.

Low cost topical agents for management of acute radiation skin toxicity have the potential to offer enormous benefits to the breast cancer patient including; decreased acute and late morbidity, improved short and long term QOL, improved tolerance and, therefore, success rate of treatment. This pilot study did note a trend noted towards increased time to peak incidence of acute radiation skin toxicity and improved QOL in the wheatgrass group despite unfavourable distribution of potential confounders.

This pilot study provides sufficient evidence of a potential role for wheatgrass in management of acute radiation skin toxicity to justify a larger multicentre randomised trial.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the partners and staff at the Riverina Cancer Care Centre for their time and effort in collecting this data. The authors would also like to thank Dr Chris Reynolds for his expert advice. This research was supported by a Charles Sturt University small grant.

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