Elsevier

Midwifery

Volume 25, Issue 6, December 2009, Pages 649-653
Midwifery

Comparing ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy: a randomised controlled trial

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2007.10.013Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

to compare the effectiveness of ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy.

Methods

double-blind randomised controlled trial. Pregnant women with nausea, who first attended the antenatal clinic at or before 17 weeks gestation, were invited to participate in the study. Over a 3-month period, 70 women were randomised to receive either ginger 1 g/day or vitamin B6 40 mg/day for 4 days. Subjects graded the severity of their nausea using a visual analogue scale, and recorded the number of vomiting episodes in the 24 hours before treatment and during 4 consecutive days while taking treatment. At 7-day follow-up, women reported any changes in the severity of their symptoms.

Results

compared with baseline, the decrease in the visual analogue scores of post-therapy nausea in the ginger group was significantly greater than that for the vitamin B6 group (p=0.024). The number of vomiting episodes decreased in both groups, and there was no significant difference between the groups. In the ginger group, 29/35 women reported an improvement in nausea symptoms, compared with 23/34 women in the vitamin B6 group (p=0.52).

Conclusion

ginger is more effective than vitamin B6 for relieving the severity of nausea, and is equally effective for decreasing the number of vomiting episodes in early pregnancy.

Introduction

Nausea and vomiting are the most common symptoms experienced in early pregnancy. Approximately 70–85% of pregnant women experience nausea, and half will also experience vomiting episodes (Hollyer et al., 2002; Jewell and Young, 2003). One-quarter of employed nauseous pregnant women will require time off work because of their symptoms (Vatyavanich et al., 2001). The cause of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy is still unknown (Vatyavanich et al., 2001).

There are limited data on the extent of women's use of herbal medicines during pregnancy (Ben-arye and Benoari, 2006). In Australia, it has been reported that 36% of pregnant women take at least one herbal medicine supplement, mainly raspberry leaf, ginger, chamomile, cranberry juice and echinacea (Forster et al., 2006).

The use of herbal supplements during pregnancy may be to relieve pregnancy related symptoms, e.g. nausea and vomiting, reflux, Candida, nutrition or to prepare for labour, or may be for unrelated health issues such as colds, respiratory illnesses or skin problems (Henry and Crowther, 2000; Nordeng and Havnen, 2004).

Despite the high use of herbal medicines, knowledge of the potential benefits or harms of many of these products is scanty, particularly with respect to their use in pregnancy (Forster et al., 2006).

Ginger, known scientifically as Zingiber officinale, is a perennial native to many Asian countries (Borrolli et al., 2005). Information on the effectiveness of ginger for the relief of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy is limited (Ben-arye and Benoari, 2006), although one study from Thailand, reported that ginger was effective for relieving the severity of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (Sripramote and Lekhyananda, 2003).

Vitamin B6 is often used for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy (Aikins, 1998). The purpose of the present study was to compare ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

Women were recruited consecutively from the antenatal clinic at Fatemieh Hospital, Hamedan, Iran. They were included in the study if it was their first attendance at the clinic, were 17 weeks of gestation or less, and had experienced nausea, with or without vomiting. Women were excluded if they: (1) had other medical disorders such as hepatitis or gastrointestinal diseases that might manifest with nausea or vomiting; (2) had mental health problems; (3) had taken other medication in the previous

Results

Between 5 April and 5 July 2006, 1200 women attended the antenatal clinic at Fattemieh University Hospital. Of these, 80 women met the study's eligibility criteria and 70 women agreed to participate (Fig. 1). Thirty-five women were randomised to the vitamin B6 group and 35 to the ginger group. One woman randomised to the vitamin B6 group (2.8%) did not return to the clinic and as no data were collected on her, she was excluded from the study. Differences in baseline characteristics of the two

Discussion

The efficacy of ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting compared with placebo has been investigated previously. This study was a randomised double-blind controlled trial to compare the efficacy of ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting.

In this study, the median change in nausea scores in the ginger group was significantly greater than that in the vitamin B6 group, while a study in Thailand (Sripramote and

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank president and vice- president of reaserch of Touyserkan Azad University Dr. M. Shams and Dr. M. Hokm Abadi for their cooperation in this survey; respectively.

We thank Mr. Sh. Mahdavi and Mrs. Z. Ghodsi for their assistance in this study.

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