Adjuvant use of melatonin for pain management in endometriosis-associated pelvic pain - a randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial

Lena Marions
2023 · doi:10.5878/qttp-wh10 · W6937108753
dataset OA: green CC0
🔓 Open OA copy Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-13 ⓘ

This randomized trial found that 20 mg of melatonin daily did not significantly reduce pain in women with endometriosis-associated pelvic pain compared to placebo.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-13 · read from full text ⓘ

This randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial studied whether 20 mg oral melatonin taken at bedtime improves pain in 40 women aged 18–50 with endometriosis-associated severe dysmenorrhea with or without chronic pelvic pain. Participants received melatonin or placebo daily for two consecutive menstrual cycles/months, with daily pain ratings on an 11-point numeric scale, and the authors pre-specified a 1.3-point difference as clinically significant. The study found no statistically or clinically significant difference between melatonin and placebo in endometriosis-associated pain, and no adverse effects were observed; however, the paper shows attrition with 16 placebo and 18 melatonin completers. This paper is centrally about endometriosis—testing whether melatonin is an effective adjuvant analgesic for endometriosis-associated pelvic pain.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Purpose: Considering the pharmacological treatment options for endometriosis-associated pain are confined to hormonal therapy and analgesics, we studied the analgesic effect of 20 mg melatonin as an adjuvant therapy in women with endometriosis-associated pain. Methods: This randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial was conducted at the Research Center for Womens’ Health at Södersjukhuset, a university hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Forty women from 18 to 50 years of age with endometriosis and severe dysmenorrhea with or without chronic pelvic pain were given 20 mg Melatonin or placebo orally daily for two consecutive menstrual cycles or months. The level of pain was recorded daily via questionnaire on the 11-point numeric rating scale. A difference of 1.3 units was considered clinically significant. Clincaltrials.gov nr NCT03782740. Results: Sixteen participants completed the study in the placebo group and 18 in the melatonin group. The difference in endometriosis-associated pain between the groups showed to be non-significant statistically as well as clinically. Conclusion: This randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial could not show that 20 mg of melatonin given orally at bedtime had better analgesic effect on endometriosis-associated pain as compared with placebo. However, no adverse effects were observed. The dataset consists of a csv fil (RCT_mel_endo.csv) with responses from the survey.
Full text 3,584 characters · extracted from oa-html · 6 sections · click to expand

Methods

This randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial was conducted at the Research Center for Womens’ Health at Södersjukhuset, a university hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Forty women from 18 to 50 years of age with endometriosis and severe dysmenorrhea with or without chronic pelvic pain were given 20 mg Melatonin or placebo orally daily for two consecutive menstrual cycles or months. The level of pain was recorded daily via questionnaire on the 11-point numeric rating scale. A difference of 1.3 units was considered clinically significant. Clincaltrials.gov nr NCT03782740.

Results

Sixteen participants completed the study in the placebo group and 18 in the melatonin group. The difference in endometriosis-associated pain between the groups showed to be non-significant statistically as well as clinically.

Conclusion

This randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial could not show that 20 mg of melatonin given orally at bedtime had better analgesic effect on endometriosis-associated pain as compared with placebo. However, no adverse effects were observed. The dataset consists of a csv fil (RCT_mel_endo.csv) with responses from the survey. Documentation files Documentation files Citation and access Citation and access Data access level: Creator/Principal investigator(s): Research principal: Data contains personal data: Yes Type of personal data: pseudonymised Code key exists: Yes Sensitive personal data: Yes Citation: Language:

Method

and outcome

Method

and outcome Population: Fyrtio kvinnor, 18-50 år med endometrios och svår mensvärk Study design: - Double-blind randomised trial - Randomised controlled trial (RCT) - Experimental study Number of individuals/objects: 40 Data format/data structure: Data collection - Self-administered questionnaire Data collection - Self-administered questionnaire Mode of collection: Self-administered questionnaire Time period(s) for data collection: 2019-08-21 - 2021-06-27 Sample size: 40 Instrument Instrument Name: RedCap Type: Technical instrument(s) Geographic coverage Geographic coverage Geographic location: Administrative information Administrative information Responsible department/unit: Department of Clinical Science and Education, Södersjukhuset [S1] Contributor(s): - Måns Edlund – Karolinska Institutet - Department of Women's and Children's Health - Hans Järnbert-Pettersson – Karolinska Institutet - Department of Clinical Science and Education, Södersjukhuset - Ylva Böttiger – University of Linköping - Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences Ethical Review Ethical Review Reviewer: - Stockholm Ethical Review Board Registration number: 2017/1177-21/2 Topic and keywords Topic and keywords Swedish Standard Classification of Research Subjects 2025:

Keywords

Publications Publications Citation: Soderman, L., Böttiger, Y., Edlund, M., Jaernbert-Pettersson, H., & Marions, L. (2023). Adjuvant use of melatonin for pain management in endometriosis-associated pelvic pain-A randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial. In PLOS ONE (Vol. 18, Issue 6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286182 SwePub: Metadata Metadata Version 1

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-html ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosischronic_pelvic_paindysmenorrhea

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-05-14T06:37:42.479783+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK