A Meta-analysis on Efficacy of Orthosiphon stamineus Extract in Hypertension Treatment

Abstract

Orthosiphon stamineus (OS) is a medicinal plant mainly used as diuretic, kidney stone treatment. Recently, a few studies on the efficacy of OS on hypertension have been conducted, but no comprehensive evaluation has been done so far. The objective of this study was to conduct meta-analysis to confirm the efficacy of OS extract in hypertension treatment. Published articles were retrieved from three accessible databases, namely Pubmed, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar. Two researches met the inclusion criteria with high quality methodology (Jadad’s score ≥ 3). Both of them used multi-ingredient neutraceuticals containing OS extract together with health education on life-style modification. The number of patients involved in the studies ranged from 30-80. All of the studies were conducted in Thailand. The results showed OS extract could significantly reduce both systolic blood pressure (SMD -0.59; 95% CI -0.99, -0.19; p = 0.003) and diastolic blood pressure (SMD -0.53; 95% CI -0.92, -0.14; p = 0.008). In conclusion, OS extract may helpful for hypertension treatment, however further study of OS extract alone on hypertension control should be conducted, since the sample size of both studies analysed was very small.