Comparison the Effect of Fish-Oil and Calcium Supplementation on Treatment of Primary Dysmenorrhea.

BACKGROUND: Primary dysmenorrhea is common among young girls and childbearing women. Dysmenorrhea is a painful contraction of uterus which occurs in the beginning of bleeding or before the menstrual cycle begins. Regarding the mechanism of calcium in response to hormonal change and the role of fish oil on reducing prostaglandins, we compared the effectiveness of fish-oil and calcium supplementation in treating primary dysmenorrheal.

METHODS: This randomized double-blinded clinical trial was conducted on women aged 18 to 45 years with moderate to severe primary dysmenorrhea symptoms from January 2015 to March 2015. The women were randomly divided to two groups (fish oil and calcium). The drugs were given every day in the first cycle and from 8 days before till 2 days after initiation of menstruation for the second and third cycles. The intensity of pain and other symptoms of dysmenorreha were recorded and data were analyzed in SPSS 16 using T-test and X2 tests. Significant level was considered to be less than 0.05.

RESULTS: The mean ± SD age of the patients in the fish oil group was 25.0±4.3 and in calcium group was 25.48±6.6 years. According to this result, there was no statistically significant difference in the intensity of pain between fish-oil group and calcium group before and 1 month after the study (P>0.05). However, there was statistically significant difference between fish-oil group and calcium group before the study and 2 months (P=0.001) and 3 months after study (p<0.001). Besides, the fishoil patients needed less analgesic as compared to the calcium patients.

CONCLUSION: It is concluded that omega-3 is more effective than calcium, what can be justified by pain mechanisms and symptoms pathology in dysmenorrheal.