Efficacy of mefenamic acid in patients with a complaint of menorrhagia.

In: Obstetrics and gynecology · 1981 · vol. 58(5) , pp. 543–51 · PMID:7029369 · W58537032
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 43 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed
AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08

Mefenamic acid significantly reduced menstrual blood loss by an average of 28.1% and bleeding duration in women with menorrhagia compared to placebo.

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

Abstract

Sixty-nine patients with a convincing history of menorrhagia completed a 4-cycle double-blind randomized placebo-controlled crossover trial of mefenamic acid taken during menstruation. Only 30 of these patients demonstrated objective menorrhagia with a measured menstrual loss greater than 80 ml during the placebo cycles, but the remainder reported passing clots and/or using 2 pads at a time. Fourteen of these women (20%) had a loss of less than 35 ml while taking placebos. This raises serious questions about the establishment of menorrhagia based on history alone. Overall, there was a mean reduction of 28.1% in menstrual blood loss between placebo and mefenamic acid cycles (P less than .001). The greatest reduction recorded was 80%, and most of the large percentage reductions were seen in patients with high loss during placebo cycles. Significant reductions in blood loss (P less than .001) were seen in patients with ovulatory dysfunctional uterine bleeding and menorrhagia that developed after tubal interruption. There was also an indication based on small sample sizes that mefenamic acid reduced blood loss in women with anovulatory dysfunctional uterine bleeding, fibroids, intrauterine devices, and von Willebrand disease. No reduction was seen during the mefenamic acid cycle in the group with a loss of less than 35 ml during the placebo cycle. There was a significant shortening of duration of bleeding (P less than .003). Fifteen patients (21.7%) experienced no objective reduction in blood loss.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Citation neighborhood

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. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

Cited by (43)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK