The Effect of Herbal Medicines on Treatment of Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy: A Systematic Review

Document Type : Review Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Midwifery and Reproductive Health Research Center, Department of Midwifery and Reproductive Health, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

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

10.22038/ijogi.2024.79603.6075

Abstract

Introduction: Nausea and vomiting are very common among pregnant women. The current systematic study was conducted with aim to investigate the effect of herbal medicines on the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnant mothers.
Methods: In this systematic review, to find double- and triple-blind clinical trial studies with a placebo control group that did not study other treatments such as acupuncture, the international databases of PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, Cochran Library, Google Scholar, and internal databases of SID, Magiran, Irandoc, and Iranmedex were investigated using the keywords including: Morning sickness, nausea, vomiting, pregnancy, herbal treatment, herba medicine, herbal remedy with Boolean operators AND and OR. Finally, two researchers independently examined the articles to evaluate the quality using Verhagen's checklist and extract their main data.
Results: In this study, 19 articles with a total sample size of 1593 were evaluated. The year of publication of the articles was from 2001 to April 2023, and a placebo control group was used in all of them. Except for one study that was conducted as cross-sectional, the design of the other studies was parallel and except for 2 articles, the other articles received a score of 3 or more from Verhagen's quality assessment checklist. In general, the results showed that ginger, lemon, mint, cardamom and the combination of mint and lemon can be effective in reducing the intensity and frequency of nausea and vomiting in most cases.
Conclusion: According to the studies, medicinal plants can have a positive effect on reducing morning nausea and vomiting in pregnant mothers and can be used with minimal side effects.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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The Iranian Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Infertility
Volume 27, Issue 9
November 2024
Pages 64-80

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