KOCHI, INDIA, July 18, 2011 (The Hindu): A recent clinical study on rheumatoid arthritis has been called a blueprint for research in Ayurveda.
While the study was specific to rheumatoid arthritis, it also looked into whether complex Ayurvedic interventions could be studied in a clinical trial. The double-dummy, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study–a procedural model considered the “gold standard” for modern clinical research–has clearly shown the feasibility of further studies of this kind. This provides a much-needed boost to Ayurveda, which has lacked modern scientific proof of its effectiveness.
In the study, personalized Ayurvedic interventions in rheumatoid arthritis demonstrated clinically significant improvement on a par with allopathy treatment, with the added advantage of lesser side-effects. While this was only a pilot study with a small sample size, its results will doubtless lead to larger studies.
The study was conducted by the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Los Angeles, California, with funding from the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. and the Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (AVP), Coimbatore. It was published in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology in June 2011 and can be accessed through PubMed of the United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
The full article, including details of the clinical procedures, can be read at the source, linked above.