A clinical trial of curcumin effect in comparison to metronidazole on the treatment of bacterial vaginosis

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is the prevailing infection. With the growing resistance of vaginal infections to routinely prescribed antibiotics, herbal medicine can be helpful. Researchers have conducted to compare the efficacy of curcumin and metronidazole in the treatment of BV as natural product. This study was a double-blind randomized clinical trial that involving 100 married women aged 18-49 who were not pregnant that sought treatment at two private outpatient clinics from January to September 2021 recruited in study. Individuals who met Amsel's clinical and paraclinical criteria for BV were randomly allocated to the intervention or control groups. Both groups were instructed to take their respective medications every 12 h for seven days. Subsequently, two weeks following the treatment, the efficacy of the treatment was assessed utilizing Amsel's clinical and paraclinical criteria. The data was analyzed using SPSS 26. The data was analyzed using the intention-to-treat (ITT) approach. The clinical (discharge (RD: 0.21; CI95%: 0.17-0.90; P = 0.01), whiff test (RD: 0.31; CI95%: 0.19-0.98; P = 0.03), and pH (RD: 0.18; CI95%: 0.19-1.04; P = 0.03)) and paraclinical variables of Amsel criteria (clue cells (RD: 0.19; CI95%: 0.13-1.03; P = 0.02) showed significant differences between groups. The curcumin consumer group exhibited a complete improvement rate of 82%, in contrast to the metronidazole group which had a rate of 42% two weeks after intervention. This study found curcumin have comparable efficacy to metronidazole in treating BV while demonstrating superior effectiveness and fewer adverse effects in alleviating symptoms.