Wenjing decoction (herbal medicine) for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhea: a systematic review and meta-analysis

• Published in: Archives of gynecology and obstetrics Vol. 296; no. 4; pp. 679 - 689
• Main Authors: Gao, Li, Jia, Chunhua, Zhang, Heng, Ma, Cuilan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.10.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal - therapeutic use; Drugs, Chinese Herbal - administration & dosage; Dysmenorrhea - drug therapy; Endocrinology; Female; Gynecology; Herbal Medicine; Human Genetics; Humans; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Meta-analysis; Obstetrics/Perinatology/Midwifery; Phytotherapy; Plants, Medicinal; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; Review; Systematic review; Primary dysmenorrhea; Traditional Chinese medicine; Systematic review; Wenjing decoction; Meta-analysis
• ISSN: 0932-0067; 1432-0711
• DOI: 10.1007/s00404-017-4485-7

Purpose Wenjing decoction is a well-accepted traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhea in East Asia, but its clinical effectiveness and risk have not been adequately assessed. In this paper, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of Wenjing decoction for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhea. Methods Eight databases were used in our research: the Cochrane Library, the Web of Science, PubMed, EMBASE, the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the Chinese Scientific Journal Database, and the Wan-fang Database. The following search terms were used: (Wenjing decoction OR Wenjing formula OR Wenjing tang) AND (primary dysmenorrhea OR dysmenorrhea OR painful menstruation) AND (randomized controlled trial). No language limitation was used. Results A total of 18 studies, including 1736 patients, were included in the meta-analysis. Wenjing decoction was shown to be significantly better than nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for the improvement of primary dysmenorrhea according to the clinical effective rate (RR 1.41, 95% CI 1.24–1.61), the visual analogue scale (MD −1.77, 95% CI −2.69 to −0.84), and the pain scale for dysmenorrhea (MD −1.81, 95% CI −2.41 to −1.22). Conclusions The results supported the clinical use of Wenjing decoction for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhea. However, the quality of the evidence for this finding was low due to a high risk of bias in the included studies. Therefore, well-designed randomized controlled trials are still needed to further evaluate the efficacy of Wenjing decoction for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhea.