A systematic review of herbal medicinal products for the treatment of menopausal symptoms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Many women have turned to complementary and alternative medicines for relief from their menopausal symptoms. The prevalence of herbal medicinal product use among menopausal women highlights the need for investigation into these interventions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the benefit of herbal medicinal products for the treatment of menopausal symptoms by performing a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. DESIGN: Literature searches of four computerized databases were done to identify randomized clinical trials of herbal medicinal products for the treatment of menopausal symptoms. Manufacturers of herbal products were contacted, and our own files were also searched. There were no restrictions on the language of publication. Trials were considered if the outcome measures related to the physical or psychological impact of menopause, whether by compendium scores, questionnaires, or women's symptom diaries, excluding studies describing artificially induced menopause. This review was not concerned with biochemical or pathological data. RESULTS: Eighteen randomized clinical trials that fit our criteria were identified. These studies investigated black cohosh (n = 4), red clover (n = 4), kava (n = 3), dong quai (n = 1), evening primrose oil (n = 1), ginseng (n = 1), and combination products (n = 4). Trial quality was generally good, with 16 of 18 studies scoring 3 or more (maximum 5) on the Jadad Scale. CONCLUSIONS: There is no convincing evidence for any herbal medical product in the treatment of menopausal symptoms. However, the evidence for black cohosh is promising, albeit limited by the poor methodology of the trials. The studies involving red clover suggest it may be of benefit for more severe menopausal symptoms. There is some evidence for the use of kava, but safety concerns mean this herbal product is not a therapeutic option at present. The evidence is inconclusive for the other herbal medicinal products reviewed.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.029 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".