Pre-clinical pharmacology: An important aspect in homoeopathic research

Abstract

Background: Before the 20th century, research in Homeopathy was limited either for its proving in healthy human volunteers or to its clinical verification/clinical efficacy in diseased individuals. However, in recent years, there has been an increased trend in the number of pre-clinical studies aimed to evaluate the pharmacological activity produced by homeopathic medicines. The objective of this review is to make a systemic compilation of results of experimental pharmacological findings of homeopathic medicines, both in vitro and in animal models, and to present the same in a summarised form. Methods: Articles published up to March 2017 having information of in vitro and in vivo studies using homeopathic medicines were collected from the PubMed database, review articles, scientific reports, research articles, thesis, online information extracted from Medline, etc. to compile this review. The articles from the most common therapeutic areas such as antimicrobial effect, central nervous system disorders, anti-inflammatory and analgesic, anticancer, wound healing, antiasthmatic and liver toxicity and other therapeutic areas such as diabetes and malaria were included in this review. Results: This review article not only provides the scientific approaches applied in Homeopathy research but also provides evidence-based information on pharmacological effects of dilutions/potencies as well as mother tincture of different homeopathic drugs. This review article also reveals the use of improved methodology, molecular techniques and analytical part adopted in recently published research articles to understand the mechanism of action of homeopathic medicines. Conclusion: Homeopathy has substantial scope in pre-clinical research where therapeutic and biological effects of homeopathic medicines with proper mechanism of action can be traced out with the use of modern molecular techniques in in vivo and in vitro experiments.