(Source: http://blog.hmedicine.com)

We are going to look at a series of trials with homeopathy and malaria.

Malaria is a highly pravalent diesease in tropical countries. Malaria is contracted by mosquitio bites. People with malaria often experience fever, chills, and flu-like illness. Left untreated, they may develop severe complications and die. Each year 350-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

First Trial - Homeopathic neem preparation in Tanzania

Objective

In the first trial, a homeopathic neem preparation is being used to prevent an outbreak of malaria.

Trial

152 patients, 79 children and 73 adults, were in the trial.

Subjects reported a decrease in Malaria. More adults reported progress than children which could be due to children not taking the medication properly.

Conclusion

From this trial we conclude that the researched homeopathic neem drops are effective and can be safely used up to 6 months when a drug holiday of a week is observed after every 2-3 months of treatment.

The results from this study show that homeopathic neem reduces instances of malaria outbreaks. This effect was observed in both adults and children after 6 months of preventative treatment. More research is needed to clarify the durability of this preventative effect in the long term.

Issues wth the trial

Some problems with these trials is the malaria is extremely easy to misidentify. No doctor was there to clinically confirm that no malaria was present. A placebo effect may have biased the results towards the positive. Researcher bias may also play a factor with in this study. This “study” had no control group with which to compare the effects of homeopathic neem leaves.

Trial 2 -Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana
An Open Study and a Double-blind Randomized Clinical Trial

Objective

The basis of this study is whether homeopathic remedies would work better than chloroquine, a drug to treat and prevent malaria.

Which homeopathic medicine should be used when individually prescribing medicines to treat malaria?

Trial
The patients that exhibit signs of Malaria such as high fever, chills, and other conditions were treated with the following homeopathic remedies and few others homeopathic medicines that are not listed.

Arse­nicum album, Cina, Eupatorium Perfoliatum, Natrum Muriaticum, Pulsatilla, Rhus toxicodendron, Nux vomica and Sulphur.

Each treatment was individualized for the patients. 92 patients were tested. 17 patients did not return for a follow up treatment. 68 out of the 75 showed improvements. 2 groups were treated, one with homeopathic remedies and a chloroquine placebo. The other group with a homeopathic placebo and chloroquine.

Conclusions

The results of the study show that the homeopathic remedies do have an effect on treatment of malaria which is significant and slighly better than chloroquine. Also, individualized homeopathic medicine seem to show a significant effect on Malaria.

Issues with the Trial

Larger trials with more test verification should be done in the future. This initial trial is very small and it can not be used as a recommendation for homeopathic treatment of Malaria until some larger trials are done.

References

Homeopathic neem on Malaria

http://www.hpathy.com/research/barlow-neem.asp

Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana

http://www.giriweb.com/vanerp.htm