Effects of antioxidant food supplements on postmenopausal women with vaginal dryness

Objective: To evaluate the effects of antioxidant food supplements on postmenopausal women with vaginal dryness. Methods: Women with vaginal dryness participated in this pretest–posttest study. The change in the Verbal Rating Scale was used to score vaginal symptoms, nominally vaginal dryness, vaginal irritation/itching, vaginal soreness, and dyspareunia. Color Doppler sonography was performed to measure the peak systolic velocity (PSV) and the end diastolic velocity (EDV) of the clitoral blood flow. Results: Thirty-four women aged 48–64 years completed the study. At baseline 24.4%, 56.1% and 19.5% of the women rated their vaginal dryness as mild, moderate and severe, respectively. At the 8 week follow-up 14.7% of the women referred to have no dryness (p=0.001), and 58.8% and 26.5% of the women rated their vaginal dryness as mild (p=0.001) and moderate (p=0.01), respectively. The mean PSV improved at the 8 week (1.71±0.7) followup compared with baseline values (1.38±0.6) (p=0.03). A similar improvement was observed for EDV [baseline (0.4±0.5) Vs 8 week follow-up (0.7±0.6), p=0.02]. Conclusions: Antioxidant food supplements could be effective in modulating postmenopausal symptoms, particularly vaginal symptoms, and could be well accepted by those women who usually do not wish to use hormone therapy or cannot use it for medical reasons.