Comparing ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy: a randomised controlled trial

Objective: to compare the effectiveness of ginger and vitamin B6 for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy. Methods: double-blind randomised controlled trial. Pregnant women with nausea, who first attended the antenatal clinic at or before 17 weeks gestation, were invited to participate in the study. Over a 3-month period, 70 women were randomised to receive either ginger 1 g/day or vitamin B6 40 mg/day for 4 days. Subjects graded the severity of their nausea using a visual analogue scale, and recorded the number of vomiting episodes in the 24 hours before treatment and during 4 consecutive days while taking treatment. At 7-day follow-up, women reported any changes in the severity of their symptoms. Results: compared with baseline, the decrease in the visual analogue scores of post-therapy nausea in the ginger group was significantly greater than that for the vitamin B6 group (p = 0.024). The number of vomiting episodes decreased in both groups, and there was no significant difference between the groups. In the ginger group, 29/35 women reported an improvement in nausea symptoms, compared with 23/34 women in the vitamin B6 group (p = 0.52). Conclusion: ginger is more effective than vitamin B6 for relieving the severity of nausea, and is equally effective for decreasing the number of vomiting episodes in early pregnancy. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.