Chinese herbal therapy for endometriosis: a review study

Background: Endometriosis is one of the most common benign disorders and affects 6–10% of women of reproductive age and causing menstrual and pelvic pain, as well as infertility, resulting in a limited quality of life. This review study was conducted with aim of summarizing related studies and try to identify therapeutic efficacy and mechanisms based on some clinical and experimental studies.Methods: In this study, all abstracts and full papers were obtained and studied through electronic searches by entering the keyword in the databases PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and Google from 2000 to 2015.Result: There are several common decoctions used to treat EM in China, including Xuefu Zhuyu decoction (XZD), Xiaochaihu decoction (XCHD), Qu Yi Kang (QYK), Yi Wei Ning (YWN), Yi Wei San (YWS), and Huoxue Xiaoyi decoction (HXD). XZD originated from 19th century in China and have been widely used to treat EM since 1983 that respectively, mentioned. Therapeutic effects and actions of them are to alleviate dysmenorrhoea, shrink endometriotic lesion and promote pregnancy in human study for XZD, COX-2↓ P450arom↓ Estradiol↓ IL-8↓ TNF- ↓ MVD↓ VEGF↓ Fas protein↑ apoptosis↑ in ectopic endometrial tissues in animal study(Rat) for XCHD, TXB2↓ IL-2↓, IL-6↓ VEGF↓ ER↓ animal study(Rat) for QYK, Dysmenorrhoea alleviation and Shrink endometriotic lesion in Human study and Fas/FasL↑ Bcl-2↓ Bax↑ apoptosis↑ COX-2↓ in ectopic endometrial tissues in animal study (Rat, Wistar) for YWN, 6-keto-PGF l TXB2↓ Blood rheology↑ Vasoactive substances in animal study (Rabbit) for YWS, ICAM-1↓ MMP-9↓ VEGF↓ AAA pathway↓ Recurrence rate↓ in animal study (Rat) for HXD,Conclusion: The results provide an evidence that herbal mixture may effectively modulate the progress of EM, however, by shrinking the lesions, suppressing the symptoms, and decreasing the recurrence rate.

Keywords:

Endometriosis , Treatment , Herbal mixture