한약 복용이 산후 유즙분비에 미치는 효과에 대한 체계적 문헌고찰 = A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials of the Clinical Effect on Taking a Herbal Medicine on Postpartum Lactation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of taking herbal medicine for the postpartum lactation.
Methods: We searched 9 databases for recent three years, that contained four english, two chinese, one japanese and two korean database from September 17, 2016 to December 31, 2020. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were eligible. Measurement of outcome included total curative effective rate, volume of lactation, volume of milk supplement, and serum prolactin concentration. The risk of bias was assessed by two independent authors using the Cochrane risk of bias tool.
Results: Total 725 of studies was screened, 11 RCTs were finally selected. Number of participants per study ranged from 60 to 257. The treatment group of taking a herbal medicine is effective for improving total curative effective rate, volume of lactation, volume of milk supplement, and serum prolactin concentration compared with control group. Because most of the studies had considerable heterogeneity in terms of type of intervention and comparison for outcome measurement, meta analysis for quantitative analysis was impossible.
Conclusions: This studies showed that taking a herbal medicine is effective on increasing volume of lactation and speeding up the start of the first breastfeeding. However, included studies suffered from incomplete reporting, high or unclear risk of bias and substantial heterogeneity between studies. In the Future, further high-quality RCTs are needed to prove effectiveness of herbal medicine for breastfeeding and reduce the risk of bias.