A NASA technology originally developed for plant growth experiments on
space shuttle missions has successfully reduced the painful side effects
resulting from chemotherapy and radiation treatment in bone marrow and
stem cell transplant patients.
In a two-year clinical trial, cancer patients undergoing bone marrow or stem cell transplants were given a far red/near infrared Light Emitting Diode treatment called High Emissivity Aluminiferous Luminescent Substrate, or HEALS, to treat oral mucositis -- a common and extremely painful side effect of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The trial concluded that there is a 96 percent chance that the improvement in pain of those in the high-risk patient group was the result of the HEALS treatment.
The HEALS device, known as the WARP 75 light delivery system, can provide a cost-effective therapy since the device itself is less expensive than a day at the hospital and a proactive therapy for symptoms of mucositis that are currently difficult to treat without additional, negative side effects.
The clinical trial was funded by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. It included 20 cancer patients from Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and 60 cancer patients from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Alabama, also in Birmingham. The trial was the brainchild of Brian Hodgson, DDS, a pediatric dentist at Marquette University and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin -- both in Milwaukee, Wis. Dr. Harry T. Whelan, Bleser Professor of Neurology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, served as the clinical trial principal investigator at Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
Patients participated in the multi-center, double-blind, placebo-controlled research study -- a way of testing a medical therapy where some groups receive treatment and others receive a placebo treatment that is designed to have no real effect. Participants were randomly placed in one of four study groups: low- and high-risk patients receiving the experimental light therapy through the WARP 75 device, and other low- and high-risk patients receiving light through a similar device without therapeutic effects. The low-risk patients were those whose chemotherapy and radiation treatment tended to cause mild or no mucositis and the high-risk patients were those whose therapy treatment tended to cause severe cases of mucositis.
Patients received the light therapy by a nurse holding the WARP 75 device -- about the size of an adult human hand -- in close proximity to the outside of the patient's left and right cheek and neck area for 88 seconds each, daily for 14 days at the start of the patient's bone marrow or stem cell transplant. During that time, trained clinicians assessed the patient's mouth and patients completed a simple form to indicate their level of pain.
