This trial showed that sodium thiosulphate can help stop hearing loss in children and young people with hepatoblastoma.
The research team recruited people between 2007 and 2014, and published the results in 2018.
Results
This trial recruited over 100 children between 1 month and 8 years old, from 12 different countries. The children taking part were put into 1 of 2 groups at random:
- 52 had cisplatin
- 57 had cisplatin and sodium thiosulphate
The research team measured hearing levels before and after treatment in 101 children who took part. They found that there was at least mild hearing loss in:
- 29 out of 46 children (63%) who had cisplatin
- 18 out of 55 children (33%) who had cisplatin and sodium thiosulphate
Of these, there was marked or severe hearing loss in:
- 6 out of 46 children (13%) who had cisplatin
- 2 out of 55 children (4%) who had cisplatin and sodium thiosulphate
The researchers also looked at how well treatment worked in both groups. They wanted to make sure that adding sodium thiosulphate didn’t affect treatment. They found there wasn’t much difference between the 2 groups.
At the end of treatment, the cancer had gone away in:
- 44 out of 52 children (85%) who had cisplatin
- 52 out of 57 children (91%) who had cisplatin and sodium thiosulphate
When they looked at how many people were living 3 years after joining the trial, they found it was:
- 48 out of 52 children (92%) who had cisplatin
- 56 out of 57 children (98%) who had cisplatin and sodium thiosulphate
Side effects
Apart from hearing loss, some of the children in both groups had some other side effects. The most common side effects were:
- a drop in white blood cells
- infection
- a drop in red blood cells
There is more information about cisplatin in our Cancer Drugs section.
Conclusion
The research team concluded that sodium thiosulphate could reduce hearing loss in children having cisplatin for hepatoblastoma. They also found that it didn’t affect how well treatment worked.
We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed 
) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team who did the research. We have not analysed the data ourselves.
