EFFECTS OF EVENING PRIMROSE IN PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM: A REVIEW STUDY

Due to the side effects and risks of chemical drugs, women are willing to use complementary and herbal
medicine during pregnancy and after childbirth. Because of this, researchers have focused significantly
on medicinal plants. The aim of this study was to review the effects of evening primrose in pregnancy
and postpartum. In this systematic review study, all articles in Persian and English available in SID,
Magiran, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus, PubMed databases using Persian keywords Maghrib,
pregnancy, and postpartum and English keywords evening primrose, obstetrics, onagraceae, postpartum
until 2021 were retrieved. The quality of the articles included in this systematic review was evaluated
using the Jadad scale and 8 articles were evaluated. In this study, 5 studies related to cervical readiness,
1 study related to diabetes, and 2 studies related to postpartum grief scored 3 and more and other studies
were excluded. The results showed that the use of evening primrose had a significant effect on improving
the lipid profile of gestational diabetes and the duration of postpartum grief and in relation to cervical
readiness, contradictory results were obtained. Due to the small number of studies and conflicting results
related to the effect of evening primrose in pregnancy and postpartum, further studies in this area are
necessary.