Is ginger effective for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome? A double blind randomized controlled pilot trial.

Objectives: Ginger is one of the most commonly used herbal medicines for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) but no data exists about its effectiveness.

Design: Double blind randomized controlled trial.

Setting: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.

Intervention: Forty-five IBS patients were randomly assigned to three groups: placebo, 1g of ginger, and 2g of ginger daily for 28 days.

Main Outcome Measures: The IBS severity scale (IBS-SS) was administered, as well as adequate relief of symptoms scale. A responder was defined as having at least 25% reduction in IBS-SS post-treatment.

Results: There were 57.1% responders to placebo, 46.7% to 1g and 33.3% to 2g of ginger. Adequate relief was reported by 53.3% on placebo and 53.3% in both ginger groups combined. Side effects were mild and reported by 35.7% in the placebo and 16.7% in the ginger groups.

Conclusions: This double blind randomized controlled pilot study suggests ginger is well tolerated but did not perform better than placebo. Larger trials are needed before any definitive conclusions can be drawn.