Page 17 - Autumn 23

• Silica and Phos-ac seem to stimulate mucus protection in fish which gives them added protection against infection. In the same study, carbohydrate stores in the liver increased.
• Fish growth rate was increased and found to be due to the remedies promoting early maturation of the digestive tract, to allow greater resistance to disease.
This was also interesting because it has direct comparisons with the use of nosodes or other homeopathic treatments in the herd situation, which could have benefits for the farming community.
The research in human homeopathy is also compelling. There were many really interesting reports of research studies in a variety of areas, all of which had been subject to rigorous design parameters and statistically analysed.
Here are a few of them:
1 Study in chronic alcoholism found LM Opium reduced
alcohol consumption by 30 units/day which is the
equivalent of a bottle of spirits.
2 Clinical trials on homeopathy for depression and crack
cocaine addiction found if you gave opium in the morning and Coca in the evening it significantly reduced the craving for crack cocaine.
3 Study on use of individualised homeopathic treatment in tx of depression. Produced statistically significant improvement in a number of areas - Sleep, emotions, energy, cognition and physical symptoms.
4 Study on effect of Homeopathy in haemophilia. In the study, patients were recruited and either received standard medical management or SMM plus homeopathy. In SMM group the reduction in annual bleeding rate was 26% after 1 year of treatment whereas reduction in ABR was nearly 65% in SMM + Homeopathy.
The use of homeopathy in the treatment of cancer was a major area of research.
1 Use of Ruta 9C in treatment of melanoma. Cutaneous melanoma is a cancer with a poor prognosis in humans due to its metastatic potential. There have been some previous studies into the effect of Ruta on melanoma cell lines in vitro. The current study which was undertaken by Dr Stephanie Chanut in Franc aimed to assess the effects of Ruta on plasma membrane reorganization and its influence on melanoma cell migration. The overall stiffness of the cellular envelope in a melanoma cell line was measured with atomic force microscopy before and after the addition of Ruta. The possible effects in vivo were then calculated with a melanoma metastasis model.
The results showed that Ruta had a number of effects on the melanoma cells including modifying the lipid composition of the cell membrane, disorganising the cytoskeleton and inhibiting migration of fibronectin. When these effects were put into the in vivo melanoma metastasis model it showed that Ruta could have the potential to decrease metastasis of melanoma cells.
2 Study of the cytotoxic and apoptotic effects of Conium on breast cancer cell lines by Dr Bindu John Pulparampil in India. Used Conium mother tincture and IM on the breast cancer cell line MDA MB 231 After 48 hours there was a significant reduction in live cancer cells and the growth of cancer cells had also been arrested. This was measured by various means including flow cytometry and other molecular profiling. The observations obtained showed that Conium both in mother tincture and 1M potencies have anti-cancer properties in the MDA MB 231 cell line.
There were other studies on Visc-alb on breast cancer showing that Visc-alb reduced cell viability and increased apoptosis. Another study on breast cancer in France showed that patients treated with homeopathy as well were better able to tolerate the side effects of cancer treatments.
There were also numerous other studies showing good evidence for the effect of homeopathy in acute otitis media, UTIs and Covid.
So where is research going now and what is the focus?
Work is ongoing into gathering input from current experts in homeopathic research seeking consensus as to what the most important considerations are when it comes to creating high quality research into homeopathic potentisation.
The aim being into providing recommendations to promote highest quality, statistically sound and reproducible basic research into specific effects of homeopathic preparations.
What are the particular challenges for homeopathic research and what can be done to overcome them?
Some of the effects that have been found for example are:
• If you place the placebo remedy next to verum for a long
period of time, the placebo becomes verum. Work has
been done on shielding remedies with aluminium foil.
• Production of remedies can differ; work is being done on trying to standardise production. You can start with ultrapure water but if put that in glass, it can strip the silica from glass, so have silica added to the remedy you
are producing.
• Some experiments have reported batch effects and
some sort of entanglement effect is proposed.
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