• Miranda A L van Tilburg, Olafur S Palsson, Yehuda Ringel, and William E Whitehead.
• University of North Carolina, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, UNC Center for Functional GI and Motility Disorders, United States. Electronic address: Tilburg@med.unc.edu.
• Complement Ther Med. 2014 Feb 1;22(1):17-20.

ObjectivesGinger is one of the most commonly used herbal medicines for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) but no data exists about its effectiveness.DesignDouble blind randomized controlled trial.SettingUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.InterventionForty-five IBS patients were randomly assigned to three groups: placebo, 1g of ginger, and 2g of ginger daily for 28 days.Main Outcome MeasuresThe IBS severity scale (IBS-SS) was administered, as well as adequate relief of symptoms scale. A responder was defined as having at least 25% reduction in IBS-SS post-treatment.ResultsThere were 57.1% responders to placebo, 46.7% to 1g and 33.3% to 2g of ginger. Adequate relief was reported by 53.3% on placebo and 53.3% in both ginger groups combined. Side effects were mild and reported by 35.7% in the placebo and 16.7% in the ginger groups.ConclusionsThis double blind randomized controlled pilot study suggests ginger is well tolerated but did not perform better than placebo. Larger trials are needed before any definitive conclusions can be drawn.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

17 keywords...

hide…