A clinical trial using danazol for the treatment of premenstrual tension

J F Watts, Julie Watts, W. R. BUTT, R. LOGAN EDWARDS
British journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 1987 · vol. 94(1) , pp. 30–34 · doi:10.1111/j.1471-0528.1987.tb02248.x · PMID:3545282 · W2152796706
Non-randomised trial OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 11 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This double-blind trial found that danazol, particularly at 200 mg daily, significantly reduced premenstrual symptoms like breast pain, irritability, anxiety, and lethargy compared to placebo by the third month.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Forty women with premenstrual tension received either placebo, 100, 200 or 400 mg danazol daily for 3 months in a pilot study arranged as a double-blind trial. Thirteen patients withdrew by the third month usually because they complained of no improvement. They had significantly higher pretrial symptom scores than those who continued. In patients treated with danazol, symptom scores for breast pain during the second and third months and for irritability, anxiety and lethargy during the third month were significantly (P less than 0.05) lower than scores in those given placebo. Most symptoms improved on placebo in the first month but by the third month only three remained improved. In contrast eight symptoms were improved on 200 mg danazol by the third month. By the end of the trial more than 75% of patients who were still taking danazol were essentially free of breast pain, lethargy, anxiety and increased appetite, but results for other common symptoms were no better than with placebo.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

MeSH descriptors

Danazol Pregnadienes Premenstrual Syndrome Anxiety Breast Diseases Breast Diseases Clinical Trials as Topic Danazol Double-Blind Method Feeding and Eating Disorders Feeding and Eating Disorders Female Humans Pain Pain Pregnadienes Premenstrual Syndrome Sleep Stages Sleep Stages

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (13)

Cited by (11)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-05-11T03:34:38.803839+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:34:55.717994+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-10-22T06:24:31.118836+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK