Efficacy of Herbal Medicine in the Treatment of Female Infertility: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: One in six couples worldwide suffers from infertility. About 50% of the reasons for infertility in couples are related to female disorders. The majority of women opted for complementary and alternative treatments. Despite the popularity of traditional and complementary medicine, evidence of its safety and efficacy remains inconclusive. Aim: To systematically review the efficacy of medicinal plant based in treating infertility among women in reproductive age. Method: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement 2020 was used to conduct this study which involved studies published between 2000 to 2021 through the databases of PubMed, ScienceDirect, Willey online Library, Cochrane, in English version. Study quality assessed using the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on controlled intervention studies. The risk of bias of the studies included assessed using The Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool. At the identification stage, there are 5,817 publications were discovered through backward searching of relevant papers. The full-text screening was conducted on 322 articles and the finding 1,354 articles failed to meet eligibility criteria at the full-text screening stage, and only 8 articles were finally eligible for further analysis. There are eight studies included in this study, applying the herbal medicine among infertility women is beneficial in improving pregnancy rate. Result: The herbal treatments had many benefits such as to improve female infertility in terms of increasing the number of high-quality oocytes and embryos, improving follicular development, ovulation, clinical pregnancy rates, blood circulation, clinical symptoms, live birth rate and endometrial receptivity. Conclusion: Herbal medicine is proven effective in treating infertility among women. This herbal medicine shows the lack of side effects that can arise, even not so severe and dangerous for the user. Keywords: Female infertility, Herbal Medicine, Women