Roseroot Herb May Treat Depression

In a recent research carried out by scientists, it was discovered that the herb roseroot could be possibly used as an alternative medicine to treat depression related disorders.

Roseroot being a natural herb has minimal side effects and those patients who cannot tolerate the side effects of anti-depression drugs, can be given Rhodiola rosea (R.rosea) or roseroot in the future.

Lead researcher and associate professor at Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, Jun Mao said, "These results are a bit preliminary but suggest that herbal therapy may have the potential to help patients with depression who cannot tolerate conventional anti-depressants due to side effects."

He added, "Larger studies will be needed to fully evaluate the benefit and harm of R. rosea as compared to conventional anti-depressants."

The study included 57 participants all of whom exhibited at least 2 or more major depressive episodes which may pertain to loss of interest or pleasure or undergoing depression for two weeks.

Some of the other symptoms experienced by these participants included too much sleep, insomnia, unintentional weight loss or weight gain, recurrent death thoughts and fatigue.

For 12 weeks, the participants were given a placebo, R. rosea extract and the anti-depressant drug sertraline.

The ones who were given sertraline were found to report improvement in symptoms by the end of 12 weeks than those were given R. rosea. Although the difference in improvement was not found to be statistically significant.

Against the patients who took placebo, participants using r.rosea experienced 1.4 times the odds of improvement while those using sertraline experienced 1.9.

On the other hand, patients using sertraline also experienced twice as much side effects which included sexual dysfunction and nausea.