Comparing ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy: a randomised controlled trial.
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.
Department of Midwifery, Touyserkan University of Islamic Azad, Hamedan, Iran.
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 1g/day or vitamin B6 40mg/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).
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