Comparison of Melissa with Acyclovir on Recurrent Labial Herpes (A systematic review)

Given the indefinite effect of antinucleoside drugs on the improvement of Recurrent Herpes Labialis, plant medicines such as Melissa officinalis have been proposed as a treatment of choice for these lesions. Clinical studies have reported different and conflicting results for the effect of Melissa on herpes. Hence, using a systematic approach, this study aimed to evaluate the clinical studies on the effect of Melissa on recurrent herpes labialis compared to acyclovir or placebo.

The English and Persian controlled clinical trials on the effect of Melissa on recurrent herpes labialis compared to acyclovir or placebo were investigated. Persian databases, including SID, Civilica, Medical Library, and Iranian Medical Sciences Theses and English databases content ProQuest, PubMed Google Scholar, were searched from 1990 to 2018 using a pre-designed strategy. Quality assessment of studies performed using the CONSORT-2010 checklist. The exclusion criteria of this study resemble details of both Persian and English searches/ articles, and eliminating one of them, in-vitro studies, and studies lacking an acceptable score by the CONSORT checklist. Out of 955 reviewed and evaluated articles from the 2010 consort checklist, 3 articles scored above 7.2 Articles were in English and 1 Article was in Persian. The search results were evaluated by the quality assessment of the recruited studies’ results. Compared to acyclovir and placebo, Melissa was more effective in reducing the lesion pain and size but had no significant effect on decreasing inflammation and erythema. The administration of the drugs did not provide any side effects.

Melissa was more effective than Acyclovir and placebo in reducing the lesion pain and size but did not significantly decrease inflammation and erythema.