Ayurvedic medicine for rheumatoid arthritis: A systematic review
Section snippets
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
We included all studies that met all of the following criteria: (1) randomized study in which any form of Ayurvedic medicine, ie, medicinal preparation administered orally or topically, was tested; and (2) the study was performed on RA patients. Studies solely on osteoarthritis (OA) and those testing therapies other than herbal medicines were excluded. RCTs of single herbs not following the principles of Ayurvedic medicine were excluded.
Search strategy
Systematic literature searches were conducted to identify
Results
A total of 33 articles were initially identified. Of these, 7 studies met the inclusion criteria (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17). The other 26 studies were excluded because 2 of them were nonrandomized, controlled trials (18, 19); 2 were comparative observational clinical trials (20, 21); 21 were uncontrolled observational clinical trials (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42); and 1 tested the effectiveness of nonherbal therapy, that is, burning (43) (
Discussion
There is a paucity of RCTs investigating the efficacy of Ayurvedic medicines for RA. Overall, the data do not convincingly demonstrate the value of Ayurvedic medicines for this condition. This is inconsistent with the current Ayurvedic practice (45) and the experience of 2 researchers (A.P.G. Amarasinghe, Manjari Dwvedi) who are Ayurvedic physicians and who believe Ayurvedic medicine is a useful approach in the treatment of RA. Of 7 RCTs, only the 3 placebo-controlled studies address the
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the contributions of Dr A.P.G. Amarasinghe in planning the study and extracting the data, and Dr Manjari Dwvedi of the Department of Prasudi Tantre, Faculty of Ayurveda, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, India for the data collection. Jongbae Park acknowledges the support of ILMAEK Medical Foundation for the ILMAEK Korean Research Fellowship. The majority of the study was performed at the Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, UK and the
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