The Siberian and Chinese herb may actually work better than conventional drugs for some people.
Researchers involved 57 participants in the study who were suffering from mild to moderate depression, and each person was given one out of a possible three substances: standardized roseroot extract, a common antidepressant called sertraline or a placebo, according to Fox News.
Participants were those who had depressed moods for at least two weeks at a time or had depressive symptoms, which can include unintentional weight change, fatigue or recurring thoughts of death.
The perennial flower plant is said to also have the ability to treat altitude sickness.
At the end of the 12-week study, participants receiving sertraline were more likely to report improvements in their symptoms by week 12 of their treatment than participants receiving roseroot extract; however, researchers were not concerned with the statistics of this particular finding, as this was a previously expected outcome.
What was more surprising and noteworthy was the fact that in comparison with participants receiving a placebo, patients taking roseroot had 1.4 times the odds of improvement, whereas patients taking sertraline had 1.9 times the odds, Medical News Today reported.
Roseroot had significantly less side effects, as well, and a whopping 63 percent of participants who received sertraline reported negative reactions to the antidepressant.
"These results are a bit preliminary but suggest that herbal therapy may have the potential to help patients with depression who cannot tolerate conventional antidepressants due to side effects," said study leader Dr. Jun J. Mao, who is an associate professor of family medicine, community health and epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.
"Furthermore, many individuals with more mild depressive symptoms weigh concerns over side effects alongside the limited benefits and costs of conventional antidepressant therapy," the study authors concluded. "Thus, it is not surprising that depressive symptoms are among the most common reasons cited by consumers to choose alternative therapy."
Despite the limitations and small sample size of the study, the findings suggested that roseroot extracts can work to treat mild or moderate cases of depression, but a larger study is needed in order to fully evaluate the benefits of the herb.
More than 19 million Americans suffer from the debilitating condition each year, which then can induce several simultaneously occurring disorders and physical illnesses.
The study was published in the March 15 edition of Phytomedicine.
