2.1. Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Inclusion
criteria were as follows:
(1)
Enrolled women with at least 12 months of menopause at baseline, and
without the physical disease; (2) women experienced postmenopausal
depression and did not
undergo
hormone therapy; (3) were treated with an oral
phytoestrogen;
(4)
reported data that can be used to
calculate the effectiveness; (5) the study was an RCT.
Studies were excluded due to the following reasons:(1) reported previous
or current use of hormone therapy, (2) history of ovariectomy or
hysterectomy, or no menopausal symptoms; (3) numerical outcome data was
not provided, (4) abstract of meeting or letters. The degree of mental
disorders was not considered among the inclusion or exclusion criteria.
2.2. Data sources and search
strategy
A
comprehensive search was conducted for relevant studies that were
published in English or Chinese, in databases including
PubMed, the Cochrane Library,
Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, Web of Science, and EMBASE on
November 25, 2020. The search keywords included (depression OR Depress*
OR blue* OR melancho*) AND (”Plant Estrogens” OR ”Phyto-Estrogen” OR
”Estrogen-Like Plant Extracts”) AND (postmenopausal* OR menopause* OR
”postmenopausal period” OR involutional)]. Details on the search
strategy have been provided
in
Supplemental Material Table 1. The reference lists of
the
studies were searched manually to identify additional
studies23. The Clinical Trials.gov website was also
searched for RCTs that were registered as completed but not yet
published24. A flow diagram of the systematic search
and study selection process is shown in Figure 1.