Dr. Chughtai on the use of saw palmetto for chronic prostatitis

In this video, Bilal Chughtai, MD, describes the background and key findings from the study, “Saw Palmetto Treatment for Prostatitis: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” for which he served as the senior author. Chughtai is the chief of urology at Plainview Hospital at Northwell Health in Plainview, New York.

Video Transcript:

Could you describe the background for this work?

One condition that we see a fair amount of is chronic prostatitis. It's always a particularly difficult condition to treat, mainly because of the fact that there's no great treatment options. In addition to that, a lot of these men are younger, they're looking for natural solutions. So, one of the things that we're very interested in doing is figuring out [if there are] data on natural solutions. We came across actually 21 studies discussing saw palmetto for chronic prostatitis.

What were the notable findings from this analysis?

There were 21 studies, [which] included over 1600 patients. What was remarkable was the fact that there's a huge variety in the types of saw palmettos used, in addition to the fact that a multitude of medications were used with it. Also, the end points were varied among the studies, which made it in some places a little bit difficult to compare them. But all in all, one thing we did see was that [with] the data for saw palmetto, there was a signal that does seem promising, especially when used in combination with other agents. It seems like it could be part of the cocktail for patients with chronic prostatitis.

This transcription has been edited for clarity.