Conditions: Dry Mouth
Keywords: dry mouth
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: CROSSOVER
Enrollment: 15
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The main objectives were: 1) To determine the efficacy of both cevimeline and pilocarpine in the secretion of saliva in patients with xerostomia, and 2) To compare the side-effects between the treatment for xerostomia with cevimeline and with pilocarpine.

Detailed description:
Pilocarpine is a cholinergic agonist with predominant muscarinic action.As such, it acts at muscarinic-cholinergic receptors found throughout the body and promotes fluid secretion. Due to this, one of the main side-effects of pilocarpine is an increased amount of sweating. Thus, not only are the salivary glands stimulated, but all of the body's exocrine glands' production is heightened. On the other hand, cevimeline is a drug with a high affinity for specific muscarinic receptors (M3) located on lachrymal and salivary gland epithelium. At least in theory, cevimeline will produce less side effects compared with pilocarpine because of the higher affinity for the muscarinic receptors located in the salivary glands. A limited number of human clinical trials in the efficacy of cevimeline and pilocarpine to increase the production of saliva and the side effects have been performed with no conclusive results.

The main purposes of this study were to determine the efficacy of cevimeline and pilocarpine in the secretion of saliva in patients with xerostomia, and to compare the side-effects between these two medications.

Arms:
arm 1: Cevimeline vs Pilocarpine arm 2: Pilocarpine vs. Cevimeline

Interventions: intervention 1: Cevimeline intervention 2: Pilocarpine
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Cevimlenine Vs Pilocarpine, cross over design. Two sequences were evaluated "cevimeline first, then pilocarpine" and "pilocarpine first, then cevimeline". Each sequence was evaluated for 4 weeks with one week "washout" period in between both sequences. 15 patients were randomly assigned to a specific sequence by a research pharmacist independent from the study authors. The patients received 30mg of cevimeline three times a day and pilocarpine 5mg three times a day. intervention 2: Cevimlenine Vs Pilocarpine, cross over design, 4 weeks, one week wash out

Protocol document: