The Herbal Medicine Proposed by Iranian Traditional Medicine (Persian Medicine) for Treatment of Primary Dysmenorrhea: A Review

Primary dysmenorrhea (PD) is defined as painful menstrual in the absence of any pelvic pathology. Nowadays, the first line treatment is the use of NSAIDs that unfortunately has contraindication and side effects. Persian Medicine has noted menstrual pain with the defined treatments by use of herbs and herbal formulations. The aim of this study is to introduce the medicinal plants used to treat menstrual and uterine pains (M & UP) in Persian Medicine for evaluating in field of PD. For this purpose, first the medicinal plants used to treat M & UP were listed using prominent Persian Medicine references. In the next step, data were collected in relation to treat PD by searching in ‘Google Scholar’, ‘Scopus’, ‘PubMed’ and ‘SID’ databases between 2000 and 2016. Finally, the plants from identified Persian Medicine list, whose effect on PD have been revealed in modern literatures were introduced. According to this review, more than 100 medicinal plants were recommended for the treatment of M & UP in Persian Medicine. They belong to 60 plant families, the most frequent of which are Asteraceae, Apiaceae, Fabaceae, Rosaceae and Lamiaceae, respectively. Also, only about 13% of the aforementioned medicinal plants have been evaluated for the treatment of PD. It seems that many plants have been introduced in Persian Medicine for the treatment of menstrual pain, which have not yet been evaluated for their therapeutic effects and precise mechanisms of action. Thus, the introduced plants could be suitable candidates for future investigations.