Danggui Sini Decoction (herbal medicine) for the treatment of primary dysmenorrhoea: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Danggui Sini Decoction (DSD), a traditional herbal prescription, has been commonly used in the treatment of primary dysmenorrhoea (PD). We investigated the current evidence of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and performed a systematic review to evaluate the efficacy of DSD in the treatment of PD. We registered the protocol for this systemic review in PROSPERO with the registration number CRD 42017074062 on August 10, 2017. Nine databases were searched from inception to August 2019. Eleven RCTs with 1005 patients were included. DSD was shown to have more favourable effects on the clinical effective rate than western medicine, which support the clinical use of DSD in the treatment of PD. However, considering the high risk of bias in the included studies, more well-designed RCTs are needed to further evaluate the efficacy of DSD in the treatment of PD.

Keywords:

• Primary dysmenorrhoea
• Danggui Sini Decoction
• Traditional Chinese medicine
• systematic review
• meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 81373770], Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Undergraduate Teaching Engineering Construction Project (2019) [grant number 51], and Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctoral Start Fund Project (2019) [grant number 135].