Chinese herbal medicine for treating menopausal symptoms in London women: developing a good practice protocol via the factor analysis of prescribing patterns in a clinical study.

The objective of the study described in this paper was to define Chinese medicine formula patterns for the treatment of menopausal women in London. These formula patterns are intended to inform the development of best practice guidelines for a future pragmatic randomised controlled trial, with the ultimate goal of evaluating the possibility of integrating Chinese medicine treatment strategies for menopausal symptoms into the UK National Health Service. Data from a clinical study that had demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of Chinese medicine in treating 117 perimenopausal women at the Westminster University Polyclinic in London were analysed for symptom occurrence and herb use. The frequency of occurrence of different presenting symptoms and the frequency of use of individual herbs is described, the patterns of combined herb use were analysed by means of factor analysis, and the correlations between these patterns and the presenting symptoms were analysed using the chi square test. Treating the emergent use patterns as Chinese herbal medicine formulas, five distinctive formula patterns emerged in the course of this study. While there is some overlap between these formulas and their associated symptom patterns and those described in Chinese medicine textbooks and guidelines, some formula patterns appear to be unique to London women. This indicates that best practice guidelines for the Chinese medicine treatment of menopausal symptoms, which have been shown to vary cross-culturally, need to be derived from local clinical practice.