Utilization of traditional herbal medicine formulas for unexplained female infertility in Korea: a retrospective study

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to investigate the prescription of traditional herbal medicines for the treatment of unexplained female infertility in Korea. By analyzing the relationships among the prescriptions and between the prescriptions and treatment outcomes, we aimed to confirm the utilization of standardized prescriptions and the effectiveness of this standardization. METHODS: The data were derived from the “support projects” of the local government for infertile women to receive Korean medical treatments. The presciption data of 453 participants from 2017 to 2018 were analyzed. Data preprocessing, frequency analysis, and network analysis were conducted. For network analysis, the characteristics of the herbal medicine prescriptions were used to calculate the degree centrality, closeness centrality and eigenvector centrality. Modularity clustering was also performed for cluster analysis. RESULTS: Fifty different prescriptions were used, among which only 22 were used for participants who became pregnant. The recommended standard prescriptions for support projects were used frequently. “BaeranChacksangBang” showed the highest level of in-degree centrality. Among the prescriptions for participants who became pregnant, “JogyeongJongokTang” and “BaeranChacksangBang” were the most influential nodes. “BaeranChacksangBang”, “AnjeonYicheonTang”, “YukLinZu” and “JogyeongJongokTang” had high closeness centrality among the prescriptions for participants who became pregnant. Clustering analysis of the prescriptions for participants who became pregnant revealed that the prescriptions showed the best modularity when divided into five groups. CONCLUSIONS: These findings depict the utilization of Korean herbal medicine in the real world and the dynamics underlying the herbal medicine prescription patterns for infertile women. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-023-04192-5.