Systematic Review of Chinese Medicine for Ovarian Endometriosis

Background: Ovarian endometriosis is a common disease found in women of childbearing age. Existing therapies in western medicine have limitations in various aspects including management of pain, prevention of recurrence and promotion of fertility. Numerous Chinese medicine preparations have been shown to possess therapeutic potential in relieving EMS symptoms and shrinking the OEMS without significant adverse effects, although the clinical efficacy needs to be further confirmed with large amounts of well-designed experiments. Objectives and Methods: RCTs of Chinese medicine concerning ovarian endometriosis are included to work out this systematic review in order to provide scientific evidence for its efficacy and safety. Results: 16 articles were selected out of 427 literatures for a systematic reviews and a meta-analysis was conducted. The studies suggest that the ovarian endometriosis patients' recurrence rate is lower and the pregnancy rate is higher in the Chinese medicine group, while the total effective rate, change in the size of endometrial cyst and CA125 level in both Chinese and Western medicine groups shows no statistical significance. Although the result favored the Chinese medicine group for lower dysmenorrhea rate and less adverse effects, the size of sample data and high heterogeneity between studies adversely affected the reliability of the results. Conclusion: Chinese medicine has two advantages over Western medicine in treating ovarian endometriosis, which are the low recurrence rate and high pregnancy rate. However, due to the limited number of literatures available and variations in their experimental methods and outcome measures, the conclusive results remain elusive. Larger scales of randomized controlled trials and more scientific evidence are needed to prove the efficacy and safety of Chinese medicines for ovarian endometriosis.