The immediate effect of facial candling on inflammatory mediators, substance P, symptoms severity, and quality of life in allergic rhinitis patients: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Substance P, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The objective of this research is therefore to study impact of facial candling on inflammatory mediators, substance P (SP), symptoms severity, and quality of life (QoL) in allergic rhinitis patients.

Why It Was Studied

Asian countries have a variety of ethnic groups and culture that provide their own traditional treatment in health care.

Facial candling appears to be one of the popular traditional treatments in Southeast Asian.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 66 patients taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults.

A randomized, nonblinded, controlled trial will be carried out by recruiting a total of 66 eligible allergic rhinitis patients who fulfill the inclusion criteria from a university health center.

The subjects will be randomly assigned into 2 groups: intervention group receiving facial candling treatment and control group (no treatment given).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Substance P group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Samples of blood and nasal mucus will be collected right before and after intervention.

Samples collected will be analyzed.

The primary outcomes are the changes in the level of SP in both blood and mucus samples between both groups.

The secondary outcomes include the levels of inflammatory mediators (ie, tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin (IL)-3, IL-5, IL-6, IL-10, and IL-13) and the severity of allergic rhinitis symptoms as measured by a visual analogous scale and QoL using the Rhinitis Quality of Life Questionnaire (RQLQ).

The trial was registered on 03/07/2016 and the first patient was enrolled on 10/12/2016.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Academic Medical Centers, Biomarkers, Malaysia, Medicine, East Asian Traditional, Mucus, Nasal Cavity and Quality of Life.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Substance P in 66 patients.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 2 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2017 (Medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Substance P compound page, all human trials.