Herbal medicinal products in the public pharmacy: a surveillance study with STW 5 in patients with functional gastrointestinal diseases

Pharmacy-based surveys on everyday life therapeutic use and patient satisfaction are tools to gain real life evidence on patient needs [1]. The use of STW 5 (Iberogast^®) for treatment of functional gastrointestinal diseases is supported by a multitude of clinical, pharmacological and toxicological studies [3].

Pharmacy customers with product desire or recommendation for STW 5 received a questionnaire with the product to be answered within a week.

Data from 843 patients were evaluated. The majority was 30-49 years old, 70.6% were female. In 384 patients, complaints were related to the upper, in 139 to the lower abdomen, in 311 patients to both regions. In 7.3% of patients a functional dyspepsia had been diagnosed, in 16.9% of the 139 patients an irritable bowel syndrome. Up to 64% of the patients specified a good or very good improvement of the predominant symptom after treatment. Symptom relief was perceived as fast and covered the comprehensive spectrum of complaints. Tolerability was rated good to very good in 97.4% of all patients. Correspondingly 93.2% of the users were „very satisfied“ or „satisfied“. 91% of the customers would recommend STW 5 to others.

It can be concluded that this pharmacy-based survey gives a reliable picture of the view of patients on STW 5, with high satisfaction values as well in irritable stomach as in irritable bowel syndrome. The ratings are well in accordance to the favorable ratings of tolerability and patient perceived satisfaction from the clinical studies on the product.

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• References

• 1 Nieber K, Lehmacher W. [Postmarketing surveillance studies in community pharmacies]. Med Monatsschr Pharm 2009; 32: 301-306
• 2 Storr M, Ottillinger B, Allescher HD, Malfertheiner P. STW 5 (Iberogast^®) for functional gastrointestinal diseases. Pharmakon 2016; 4: 356-364 ,
• 3 Abdel-Aziz H, Kelber O, Lorkowski G, Storr M. Evaluating the Multitarget Effects of Combinations through Multistep Clustering of Pharmacological Data: the Example of the Commercial Preparation Iberogast. Planta Med 2017; 83: 1130-1140