Aromatherapy review reports pregnancy symptom improvements, with safety details missing
Pooled studies found improvements in nausea, vomiting, anxiety and sleep scores, while leaving key treatment details unclear.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
Aromatherapy was associated with improvements in nausea and vomiting, anxiety and sleep scores among pregnant women in the included studies. The review combined randomized and quasi-experimental evidence. Although the authors describe aromatherapy as safe, the abstract provides no adverse-event results, so it cannot establish safety for particular oils, methods of use or stages of pregnancy.
The abstract omits symptom scales, exposure durations and outcome-specific comparators. Detailed study-quality findings are also absent, making the practical meaning and reliability of the pooled score differences difficult to assess.
What researchers found
Nausea and vomiting symptoms
Versus study control groups; the review allowed conventional care, complementary therapies or placebo. Outcome-specific controls and measurement times were not reported.
Different treatment comparisons
Researchers examined aromatherapy for physical or psychological symptoms during pregnancy. Eligible studies could compare it with conventional treatment, another complementary approach or placebo, so this was not a single uniform treatment comparison.
Understanding the effect size
The nausea and vomiting result is a standardized mean difference favouring aromatherapy. It describes a difference in symptom scores, not the percentage of women helped or a percentage reduction in vomiting episodes.
The original publication
Effectiveness of aromatherapy on physiological and psychological symptoms during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Mascarenhas VHA, Caroci-Becker A, Nick JM et al.
Complement Ther Med · 2025
- PubMed ID
- 41192533
- Record checked
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