the effect of salvia officinalis on hot flashes in postmenopausal women: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: the experience of hot flashes during menopause has a negative effect on quality oflife and can cause disturbance in the workplace and disrupt daily activities. phytoestrogens in salviaofficinalis reduce menopause symptoms due to their anti-dopaminergic effects. this study wasconducted to systematically review and summarize the results of clinical trials on the effect of salviaofficinalis on hot flashes in postmenopausal women.methods: in this systematic review, databases including pubmed, web of science, cochrane library,scopus, sid, and magiran were searched using keywords such as menopause, hot flashes, salviaofficinalis, and herbal medicines; all possible combinations of these words were used with the booleanoperators of “or” and “and”. to evaluate the quality of articles, we used cochrane’s risk of biastools.results: after eliminating the duplicates, a total of 148 articles were found. following the exclusion ofirrelevant articles, 4 studies with number of 310 people were examined. among them, 3 out of 4 studiesexamined the effect of salvia officinalis on the frequency of hot flashes, 3 out of 4 studies examinedthe severity of hot flashes, and only 1 out of 4 studies examined the effect of salvia officinalis on theduration of hot flashes. all 4 reviewed studies indicated that the use of salvia officinalis reduced thefrequency and severity of hot flashes in postmenopausal women. meta-analysis results showed that theeffect of salvia officinalis on the frequency [es=-1.12 (%95 ci:-2.37; 0.14), i2=71%] of hot flashes inpostmenopausal women was significant compared to placebo, but severity [es=-2.05 (%95 ci:-6.53;2.43), i2=70%] was not significant.conclusion: salvia officinalis can be used to reduce the frequency of menopausal hot flashes. expansiveuse of this plant can be suggested in case it is confirmed in further investigations.