Issue 57
St. John's wort and PMS
Nineteen women with PMS,
who were in otherwise good physical and mental health, and not taking any other
treatments for PMS,
voluntarily took St. John's Wort three
times a day for two complete menstrual cycles. Each doseage contained 300mg
Hypericum extract standardised to 900ug
hypericin. Symptoms were rated daily throughout and before the trial. It was
found that over two thirds of the sample experienced at least a 50% decrease
in symptom severity.
These findings are far from conclusive because such a
small sample group was involved and the investigation was only carried out as
a pilot study. However, they do suggest that it might be prudent to carry out
randomised, placebo controlled, double blind trials to investigate this issue
further.
British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2000,
107; 870-876
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