Current state of research on the clinical benefits of herbal medicines for non-life-threatening ailments

Abstract

Herbal medicines are becoming increasingly popular among patients because they are well tolerated and do not exert severe side effects. Nevertheless, they receive little consideration in therapeutic settings. The present article reviews the current state of research on the clinical benefits of herbal medicines on five indication groups, psychosomatic disorders, gynecological complaints, gastrointestinal disorders, urinary and upper respiratory tract infections. The study search was based on the database PubMed and concentrated on herbal medicines legally approved in Europe. After applying defined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 141 articles were selected: 59 for psychosomatic disorders (100% randomized controlled trials; RCTs), 20 for gynecological complaints (56% RCTs), 19 for gastrointestinal disorders (68% RCTs), 16 for urinary tract infections (UTI, 63% RCTs) and 24 for upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) (79% RCTs). For the majority of the studies, therapeutic benefits were evaluated by patient reported outcome measures (PROs). For psychosomatic disorders, gynecological complaints and URTI more than 80% of the study outcomes were positive, whereas the clinical benefit of herbal medicines for the treatment of UTI and gastrointestinal disorders was lower with 55%. The critical appraisal of the articles shows that there is a lack of high-quality studies and, with regard to gastrointestinal disorders, the clinical benefits of herbal medicines as a stand-alone form of therapy are unclear. According to the current state of knowledge, scientific evidence has still to be improved to allow integration of herbal medicines into guidelines and standard treatment regimens for the indications reviewed here. In addition to clinical data, real world data and outcome measures can add significant value to pave the way for herbal medicines into future therapeutic applications.