The Role of Herbal Medicine as An Alternative Treatment Option for Endometriosis: A Literature Review

Sutrisno Sutrisno, Putri Nadia Paramadina
In: Asian Journal of Health Research · 2023 · vol. 2(3) , pp. 47–54 · doi:10.55561/ajhr.v2i3.125 · W4390451711
review OA: diamond CC0 ⤵ 2 in-corpus citations
🔓 Open OA copy Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

This literature review found that various herbal compounds show potential for managing endometriosis through mechanisms like reducing inflammation, inhibiting cell migration, and inducing apoptosis.

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

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-06 · read from full text ⓘ

This paper is a literature review examining herbal medicine as an alternative treatment option for endometriosis, searching English and Bahasa Indonesia studies across major databases for topics including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory herbal compounds such as silymarin, curcumin, Viburnum opulus, Pueraria, Allium sativum, black garlic, and naringenin, including in vitro, in vivo, and clinical trial studies. The review reports that numerous herbal treatments have been investigated for mechanisms relevant to endometriosis, including reducing migration and adhesion of endometriosis to other tissues, suppressing inflammatory responses, providing antioxidant effects, inhibiting estrogen activity, and inducing apoptosis through various signaling pathways. The main limitation explicitly noted is the need for further research to establish efficacy of herbal therapy for endometriosis. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it reviews herbal medicine options and proposed mechanisms for managing endometriosis.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Introduction: Endometriosis is a benign gynecological disorder characterized by ectopic growth of endometrial tissue. This condition may deteriorate patient’s quality of life due to pain as its main manifestation and its complications, including impaired fertility and risk of ovarian cancer. Current standard endometriosis treatment still yields numerous side effects and controversy. Thus, herbal medicine is hoped to be the safer alternative treatment with excellent efficacy for endometriosis. Methods: The search of literature published in English or Bahasa Indonesia was performed by incorporating the search queries “endometriosis”, “herbal therapy”, “silymarin”, “curcumin”, “Viburnum opulus”, “Pueraria”, “Allium sativum”, “black garlic”, “naringenin” on databases including PubMed, Cochrane, Springer, Science Direct, Nature, and Google Scholar. The studies included were in vitro studies, in vivo studies, and clinical trials. Results: Various herbal treatments have been widely studied regarding their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, neuroprotective, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, antiallergy, and immunomodulatory capacity. A lot of herbal compounds have the potential to suppress and manage endometriosis through various mechanisms, such as inhibiting the migration and adhesion of endometriosis to other tissues, suppressing inflammatory response in endometriosis pathogenesis, generating antioxidant, inhibiting estrogen activity, and inducing apoptosis of endometriosis cell through a number of signaling pathways. Conclusion: Herbal medicine has the potential to manage endometriosis through various mechanisms. Further research is needed regarding the efficacy of herbal therapy in managing endometriosis.
Full text 2,106 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 5 sections · click to expand

Keywords

Antioxidant, Endometriosis, Extract, Herbal Medicine, InflammationAbstract

Introduction

Endometriosis is a benign gynecological disorder characterized by ectopic growth of endometrial tissue. This condition may deteriorate patient’s quality of life due to pain as its main manifestation and its complications, including impaired fertility and risk of ovarian cancer. Current standard endometriosis treatment still yields numerous side effects and controversy. Thus, herbal medicine is hoped to be the safer alternative treatment with excellent efficacy for endometriosis.

Methods

The search of literature published in English or Bahasa Indonesia was performed by incorporating the search queries “endometriosis”, “herbal therapy”, “silymarin”, “curcumin”, “Viburnum opulus”, “Pueraria”, “Allium sativum”, “black garlic”, “naringenin” on databases including PubMed, Cochrane, Springer, Science Direct, Nature, and Google Scholar. The studies included were in vitro studies, in vivo studies, and clinical trials.

Results

Various herbal treatments have been widely studied regarding their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, neuroprotective, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, antiallergy, and immunomodulatory capacity. A lot of herbal compounds have the potential to suppress and manage endometriosis through various mechanisms, such as inhibiting the migration and adhesion of endometriosis to other tissues, suppressing inflammatory response in endometriosis pathogenesis, generating antioxidant, inhibiting estrogen activity, and inducing apoptosis of endometriosis cell through a number of signaling pathways.

Conclusion

Herbal medicine has the potential to manage endometriosis through various mechanisms. Further research is needed regarding the efficacy of herbal therapy in managing endometriosis. Downloads Published Issue Section License Copyright (c) 2023 Sutrisno Sutrisno, Putri Nadia Paramadina This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosis

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.

References (45)

Cited by (2)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK