TheConversation: There’s no reliable evidence that health conditions can be effectively treated with homeopathic medicine, according to a statement by the National Health and Medicine Research Council (NHMRC) released today. The study failed to find any evidence for homoepathy’s effectiveness
for treating 68 conditions, which ranged from the common cough through
to malaria. Only single studies were identified for 29 of the
conditions, and all were deemed unreliable for either having too few
participants for a meaningful result or being poorly designed. The statement is based on a summary of research on
homeopathy’s effectiveness for treating health conditions. It aimed to
provide people who use homeopathic remedies with information of their
risks and benefits so they could make informed health decisions.
The chair of the committee that produced the report, Paul Glasziou
said the statement was not going to stop the use of homeopathic
treatments overnight.
Professor Glasziou, who is director of the Centre for Research in
Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University said the trend would likely
follow a similar pattern observed after the release of a 2010 UK report by the House of Commons. There had been a decline in the use of homeopathy in the UK since that report, he added.
“This lack of scientific research into the use of homeopathic
medicine is not unusual and is mirrored across most alternative
treatments” said Paul Komesaroff, professor of medicine from Monash
University and medical practitioner.
Glasziou said reports like this created “a dialogue about the nature
of the evidence and what constitutes evidence and people start to look
at it and it makes an impact”.
Professor Komesaroff said patients should be supplied with accurate
and up-to-date information on treatment options and that some treatment
types in the field of complementary and alternative medicine lacked
evidence.
“People who use alternative medicines such as homeopathy do so for a
large suite of reasons not just for treatment. Their supposed
effectiveness is only one reason,” Professor Komesaroff said. “One quick
example is reducing the symptoms that people suffer from HIV
medication.”
The NHMRC statement did not mention preventative health, but Professor Glasziou did not see this as a shortcoming.
“If you look at what GPs are treating people for, the vast majority
of people are coming in for symptoms rather than health checks and
preventative measures,” he said.