A review on herbal medicines effective of premenstrual syndrome in Iran

Document Type : Case report

Authors

1 M.Sc. student of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate professor, Department of Midwifery and Reproductive Health, Reproduction Endocrinology Research Center, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: Premenstrual syndrome is one of the most common disorder of reproductive age. Women turns to natural remedies or complementary medicine to get rid of it. Health providers need to appropriate information in order to help women to choose the best alternative based on evidences. This study was performed with aim to evaluate the clinical trials which are performed about herbal and alternative remedies for treatment of premenstrual syndrome in Iran and the analysis of their effectiveness on reducing the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome.
Methods: In this study, 42 clinical trials were found through searching in electronic databases of SID, PubMed, Google scholar, Science direct and also searching in books and student thesis from February 2014 and using the key words including; Alternative medicine, Herbal medicine, Premenstrual syndrome, PMS, and Complementary medicine. The English articles from 2005 to 2016 and the Persian ones from 2010 were studied.
Results: In this study, 11 different types of medicinal plants in 42 clinical trials which met the inclusion criteria were evaluated. Most herbs have been studied in articles antioxidant compounds, flavonoids with anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties and had a favorable impact in relieving PMS. Most of the plants had antioxidant compounds, flavonoids with anti-inflammation and anti-pain characteristics and were effective in relieving the symptoms of PMS. Most of these plants had any side-effects or had minimal complications. Since the methodology of the studies were heterogeneous in terms of quality, so there was no possibility of conducting meta-analysis.
Conclusion: The results of studies indicate the reduction in the severity of premenstrual syndrome symptoms using herbal medicines such as Vitagnus, Evening Primrose oil, chamomile, wheat germ, lavender, Echinophora-platyloba, valerian, orange peel and ginger.

Keywords


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