Ginger

Last reviewed 2026-09-22. How this works.

Treatment-related nausea Grade C

Human evidence exists and does not settle it.

Trials of ginger for sickness during treatment have mostly found no effect, and it does nothing to the cancer.

Randomised trials mostly null for sickness. Nothing at all for the tumour.

The claim

The claim is that ginger helps the nausea that comes with chemotherapy. A second, separate claim is that it treats the cancer.

What it does

Ginger has effects on the gut and on nausea pathways. The tumour claim rests on laboratory work at concentrations no one has shown a person can reach.

The evidence

Two reviews have pooled the randomised trials of ginger against placebo or an antiemetic in people having chemotherapy. Neither found a significant difference in nausea or vomiting.¹²

The later of the two reports one exception. Within a subgroup defined by how much was taken and for how long, acute vomiting was significantly less common, odds ratio 0.30, interval 0.12 to 0.79. A subgroup finding inside an otherwise null analysis is a lead rather than a result, and the amounts that define it are not given on this page.¹

That is the whole of what the grade rests on: a mostly null randomised literature with one signal inside it that nobody has since gone back and tested on its own.¹²

The studies this rests on

Pooled randomised trials of ginger for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting¹

A meta-analysis, summarising randomised trials, measured what patients reported.

no significant difference in acute nausea, delayed nausea, acute vomiting or delayed vomiting; a subgroup defined by amount and duration showed less acute vomiting.
odds ratio 0.3, interval 0.12 to 0.79. in a subgroup defined by amount and duration only; the pooled comparison it sits inside found no significant difference
Earlier pooled analysis of ginger as an antiemetic during chemotherapy²

A meta-analysis, summarising randomised trials, measured what patients reported, 872 participants.

current evidence does not support ginger for controlling chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

What is absent

The one favourable finding comes from a subgroup inside an analysis that was otherwise null, and no trial has since been run to test that subgroup as a question of its own.

Scope: acute vomiting during chemotherapy.

Established by published review, the meta-analysis of randomised trials recorded in chapter 10 note 13, checked 2026-09-22. Result: the authors conclude that the effects on chemotherapy-induced nausea and on delayed vomiting could not be confirmed.¹

No human evidence shows that ginger changes what a cancer does. That claim and the nausea claim are separate and are often merged.

Scope: treating the tumour.

Nobody has run a search to establish this, so it is the register’s reading of what exists rather than a gap somebody has looked for and confirmed.

What to ask

Is ginger worth trying for the sickness, alongside whatever you would normally prescribe?

The dish-to-person gap

Ginger is eaten as food rather than taken as a measured compound, and the register holds no human pharmacokinetic measurement for it.

When to call your team — no warning signs are recorded

If you have changed how you eat because of something you have read, or are thinking about it, the people treating you can only weigh that if they know about it. That is true when nothing has been written down here, and it is most true then.

The register records no warning signs for this entry. That is not a statement that nothing can go wrong.

Interactions

The register holds no measured interaction between this food and a cancer treatment class. An empty list means nobody has measured it, not that nothing would happen. Concentrated extracts are a different question from the food.

Nobody having looked is not the same as nothing being there. That is what this line says and all it says.

The whole interaction list, and how to turn it into a pharmacy review request.

Find a trial instead

This is an ordinary food rather than an intervention with recruiting trials attached.

References

Effects of ginger intake on chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Nutrients 2022;14(23):4982.
doi:10.3390/nu14234982 · PubMed 36501010
How this was reached: transcribed from chapter note, via docs/CHAPTER-NOTES.json, chapter 10 note 13.
Lee J, Oh H. Ginger as an antiemetic modality for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
PubMed 23448741
How this was reached: transcribed from chapter note, via docs/CHAPTER-NOTES.json, chapter 10 note 13.