EFFICACY AND SAFETY OF ORAL ZINGIBER OFFICINALE FOR NAUSEA AND VOMITING: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS

Sevillano L.S.; Risco M.M. · Revista de la Facultad de Medicina Humana (2026) · DOI: 10.25176/rfmh.v26i2.8749

Resumen

A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of orally administered Zingiber officinale for the management of nausea and vomiting associated with pregnancy, chemotherapy, and the postoperative period. Randomized clinical trials published between 2015 and 2025 were included and identified through searches in PubMed, CENTRAL, LILACS, and ClinicalTrials.gov, following the PRISMA 2020 statement. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane RoB 2 tool. Twenty randomized clinical trials were included. Overall, Zingiber officinale showed a favorable trend toward reducing nausea intensity and, in some studies, the frequency of vomiting, compared with placebo or standard antiemetic treatment. The benefit was more consistent for nausea than for vomiting. Reported adverse events were predominantly mild and gastrointestinal, with no serious events attributable to the intervention. Although most studies had a low risk of bias, some raised "some concerns", mainly due to insufficient information on randomization and the handling of missing data. Heterogeneity in doses, formulations, intervention duration, assessment methods, and follow-up periods limits the certainty of the evidence. In conclusion, Zingiber officinale could be a safe and potentially effective complementary intervention, although higher-quality trials with standardized protocols and longer follow-up are needed. Artículo publicado por la Revista de la Facultad de Medicina Humana de la Universidad Ricardo Palma. Es un artículo de acceso abierto, distribuído bajo los términos de la Licencia Creative Commons: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), que permite el uso no comercial, distribución y reproducción en cualquier medio, siempre que la obra original sea debidamente citada. Para uso comercial, por favor póngase en contacto con revista.medicina@urp.pe