Study: Steroid Drugs Can Alleviate Nausea and Vomiting in Cancer Patients

SadaNews - A limited trial showed that the use of a common type of steroid can alleviate nausea and vomiting experienced by cancer patients in the early days of taking morphine for pain relief.

In the study, 150 adult cancer patients who had started taking morphine were randomly selected to receive dexamethasone orally six hours before treatment or standard care without nausea and vomiting prevention.

The study concluded that the group who took dexamethasone had significantly lower average rates of nausea, and vomiting episodes decreased considerably over the following three days, according to Reuters.

The study will be presented this week at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Singapore. Patients who received dexamethasone needed fewer additional medications to control these symptoms during the first few days.

The study showed that the differences between the two groups disappeared by the fifth day as patients' bodies adapted to morphine.

The study's author, Dr. Suhana Solviker from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, stated that pain is one of the most challenging symptoms faced by cancer patients in advanced stages, and strong medications like morphine are often necessary to help alleviate the severity of the pain.

Solviker noted that dexamethasone is already a commonly used medication for treating chemotherapy-related nausea. She added that "it is a cheap, widely available drug that is well-known to doctors in many hospitals and countries, and its side effects are relatively few when used for a short period."