Review, 1991
Is there one treatment that clearly works best for PMS?
No. This review says that as of 1991, no treatment studied had been shown to work better than a placebo (fake treatment), even though many were popular.
What they did
This is not a new study. It is a review article from 1991 that looks back at the research on PMS done up to that point, including how PMS was defined and what treatments had been tried.
What they found
The authors note that PMS was first described as needing treatment back in 1931. Since then, researchers still had not agreed on a single definition of PMS. Many treatments had been tried, including diet, exercise, vitamins, hormones, and drugs, but none of them worked better than placebo. The authors argue this may be because scientists did not yet fully understand the psychological or biological causes of PMS.
What it means for you
This paper does not tell you what works for PMS. Instead, it explains why, at the time, research had not found a clear answer, and it calls for better theories and study designs. It is a very old paper (1991), so newer research may have found more since then.
1931
Year PMS first described as needing treatment
1991
Year review published
About the study
- Original title
- Premenstrual syndrome
- Authors
- Tucker JS, Whalen RE
- Journal
- International journal of psychiatry in medicine
- Year
- 1991
- Study design
- Review
- What was tested
- None tested directly. The review discusses diet, exercise, vitamin, hormone, and drug treatments that other studies had tried.
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.2190/1cet-d610-uheb-yng6