Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24months of life-a pragmatic randomised controlled trial.

Abstract

Homoeopathy, using conventional medicine as a safety backdrop, was more effective than conventional treatment in preventing sick days, sickness episodes, and respiratory illnesses in the first 24months of life. It necessitated fewer antibiotics and its overall cost was lower. This study supports homoeopathy, using conventional medicine as a safety backdrop, as a safe and cost-effective primary care modality during the first 2years of life. Clinical Trial Registry-India (2018/09/015641). https://ctri.nic.in/Clinicaltrials/login.php What is Known: • Due to their holistic nature, many Complementary and Alternative Medical (CAM) modalities are not readily amenable to assessment by head-to-head RCT for a given Indication. • We propose a pragmatic, RCT comparing homoeopathic with conventional medicineas a system. • Homoeopathic was apparently superior to conventional primary care in preventing sick days, sickness episodes, and respiratory illness episodes and was significantly associated with growth in height but not weight and required fewer antibiotics in children from birth to 24 months of age.