Action of Matricaria Recutita in the Management of Oral Mucositis in Animal Model: Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Oral mucositis comprises an acute inflammatory condition frequent in cancer patients.To date, therapeutics have only alleviated the clinical aspect of lesions. Chamomile stands out as one of the most used plants in the world for medicinal purposes, as it has several beneficial characteristics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of topical chamomile in the oral mucositis with clinical and/or histological parameters in an animal model. It was a systematic review, which sought articles of the “experimental study” in an animal model according to the PRISMA parameters. The databases used were PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Bireme. Crossing descriptors were selected from DeCs/MeSh with the operators AND and OR, and the ARRIVE strategy was applied. The search found 43 publications. After all the refinement steps, two articles evaluating the effects of the fluid extract of chamomile (Ad-Muc®) on chemo-induced oral mucositis were selected. The total sample included 141 female hamsters and the two studies used the same methodology to induce the lesion. The results showed that, applying chamomile in oral mucositis in hamsters was effective, both from a clinical (p <0.0001) and histological parameters, with a significant reduction in pro-inflammatory cytokines (p <0.05). The ARRIVE strategy, 15 recommendations were implemented out of 20 criteria in both studies.The application of topical chamomile in the treatment of chemo-induced oral mucositis in hamsters seems to be recommended due to the clinical/histopathological results demonstrated and its capability to reduce the levels of some pro-inflammatory cytokines.