Dong quai (Angelica sinensis) is a root used in Chinese herbal medicine and sold for menstrual cramps, irregular periods and menopause symptoms. In a 24-week trial in postmenopausal women it worked no better than placebo for hot flashes.
Also known as: Angelica sinensis, female ginseng, dang gui.
The trials below gave dong quai daily for 24 weeks and 3 months; the abstracts we read do not state the amount, so we do not list one.
It is sold in the US as a dietary supplement. Under the 1994 dietary supplement law (DSHEA), FDA does not approve dietary supplements before they are marketed, and the maker, not FDA, is responsible for safety and labeling. The European Medicines Agency's herbal committee declined to write an EU monograph for dong quai root in 2013. It found no adequate evidence of long-standing medicinal use in Europe and noted preliminary toxicological concerns about the plant's chemistry (EMA).
What studies show: in a 24-week placebo-controlled trial in 71 postmenopausal women with hot flashes, dong quai did not change the number of hot flashes, menopause symptom scores, the womb lining or vaginal cells, and was no more helpful than placebo (Hirata 1997). In a pilot trial in 22 men with hot flashes from prostate cancer hormone therapy, 3 months of dong quai showed no difference from placebo (Al-Bareeq 2010).
Safety: a woman stable on warfarin had her INR more than double after 4 weeks of dong quai, and it returned to target a month after she stopped; the authors note dong quai contains natural coumarin derivatives (Page 1999). This is a single case report.
We could not find a single published half-life or time to peak for dong quai that applies to a supplement dose, so we do not list one. Plant extracts are mixtures of many compounds, so no single figure would describe them.
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