sHot Flashes of Menopause and Herbal Medicine in Iran: A Systematic Review

In the area of menopause and it’s related problems، alternative and complementary therapies are expanded to some extent. As such study hasn’t been done till now، here under the title of Hot Flashes of Menopause and Herbal Medicine، it’s aimed to analyze clinical trials of herbal medicine and to summarize them.

In this study some informations were gathered from database SID، IranMedex، IranDoc، Magiran، Google Scholar، PubMed and journals of herbal medicines also papers from the beginning of the year 2000 to 2013 were evaluated. These papers were evaluated under the scrutiny of Jadad scale and those were used in the study which got the score 3 or more. Data were analyzed qualitatively.

Among 27 clinical trials which were analyzed، 22 of them got the score 3 or more under the scale of Jadad. In this research، 6 papers were devoted to soybeans، 4 to five-finger herb، 3 to Licorice، 2 to fenugreek، 1 to Linnaeus'' flower clock، 1 to valerian، 1 to flaxseed، 1 to paper sage، 1 to geranium tea، 1 to anise، 1 to manee papers، 1 to red clover، 1 to black kohosh and 1 to the plant hypericum. Consequently، due to the heterogeneity of the time that had been spent for studies، doses and specific products; performing a meta-analysis was impossible.

In Iran different papers have been written in this area. Although numerous and perfectly-valid papers exist which focus on soybeans، it is suggested for treatment of menopause problems.