Therapeutic Effect Of Suanzaoren Decoction On Peri-menopausal Insomnia In Patients With Liver And Blood Deficiency

Background: Perimenopausal syndrome exhibits various symptoms which is related to autonomic nerve and neuropsychological problems like; sleep disorder, hot flushes/sweating,mental disorder, depression, amnesia, heart discomfort, dryness of vagina, bladder problem etc;which is considered to be caused by decreasing of serum sex hormone level. The symptoms are vary between individual patients, from mild discomfort to severe impact on the patient’s quality of life. Insomnia is one of the major complaints among perimenopausal middle aged women,which can be seen near 50 percent of perimenopausal syndrome patients. Most commonly used therapies for treatment of perimenopausal insomnia are mental sedatives and hormone replacement therapy; which comes with various side effects and wide range of effectiveness.Chinese traditional medicine provides lesser side effects and with a holistic point of view in treating the disorder in question. In this paper we focus on a group of middle aged -perimenopausal insomnia patients who fit into ’Gan Xue Xu’type and observe Suanzaoren Tang’s effects on the patients’ major/minor various symptoms, correlations between perimenopausal insomnia related symptoms, serum sex hormone level of the two groups.Objective: To validate evidences on effectiveness of Chinese traditional medicine diagnostic treatment methods; to observe Suanzaoren Tang’s short - term clinical performances on deficiency liver-blood type perimenopausal insomnia patients.Methods: Of perimenopausal insomnia patients who met required conditions, 35 cases were proceeded to the final analysis on menopause rating scale questionnaire, of which 16 cases were randomely chosen to control group, treated with Bai Lemian Jiao nang, 19 cases were randomely chosen to experiment group, treated with Suanzaoren Tang. SPSS ver. 19.0 statistical software was used to examine the insomnia, menopause symptoms and serum sex hormone level of the two groups.Results: To compare each groups of cases before and after treatment showed that each of the groups’ sleep problem symptoms’ rating decreased in a significant level(s < 0.01); to compare after the treatment each group of cases showed that the sleep problems(p < 0.05) and depressive mood(p <0.01) symptoms’ rating of experiment group decreased in a significant level; none of two group showed any significant statistical difference in serum sex hormone level after the treatment(p > 0.05).Conclusion: Study results suggest that there are statistical evidences supporting Suanzaoren Tang’s positive effects on perimenopausal insomnia related symptoms; sleep problem,depressive mood, but showed insignificant effects on the serum sex hormone level. To consider increased number of cases and/or longer testing time could yield different results in sex hormone level.