Monthly Archives: July 2014
A remarkable article about homeopathy and immunisation entitled THE IMMUNISATION DILEMMA came to my attention recently. Its abstract promised: “evidence quantifying the effectiveness of vaccination and HP (homeoprophylaxis) will be examined. New international research describing and analysing HP interventions will be reported. An evidence-based conclusion will be reached.”
Sounds interesting? Let’s see what the article really offers. Here is the relevant text:
…evidence does exist to support claims regarding the effectiveness of homeopathic immunisation is undeniable.
I was first invited to visit Cuba in December 2008 to present at an international conference hosted by the Finlay Institute, which is a W. H. O.-accredited vaccine manufacturer. The Cubans described their use of HP to control an outbreak of leptospirosis (Weilʼs syndrome – a potentially fatal, water-born bacterial disease) in 2007 among the residents of the three eastern provinces which were most severely damaged by a severe hurricane – over 2.2 million people [7]. 2008 was an even worse year involving three hurricanes, and the countryʼs food production was only just recovering at the time of the conference. The HP program had been repeated in 2008, but data was not available at the conference regarding that intervention.
I revisited Cuba in 2010 and 2012, each time to work with the leader of the HP interventions, Dr. Bracho, to analyse the data available. Dr. Bracho is not a homeopath; he is a published and internationally recognised expert in the manufacture of vaccine adjuvants. He worked in Australia at Flinders University during 2004 with a team trying to develop an antimalarial vaccine.
In 2012 we accessed the raw leptospirosis surveillance data, comprising weekly reports from 15 provinces over 9 years (2000 to 2008) reporting 21 variables. This yielded a matrix with 147 420 possible entries. This included data concerning possible confounders, such as vaccination and chemoprophylaxis, which allowed a careful examination of possible distorting effects. With the permission of the Cubans, I brought this data back to Australia and it is being examined by mathematicians at an Australian university to see what other information can be extracted. Clearly, there is objective data supporting claims regarding the effectiveness of HP.
The 2008 result was remarkable, and could only be explained by the effectiveness of the HP intervention. Whilst the three hurricanes caused immense damage throughout the country it was again worse in the east, yet the three homeopathically immunised provinces experienced a negligible increase in cases whilst the rest of the country showed significant increases until the dry season in January 2009 [8].
This is but one example – there are many more. It is cited to show that there is significant data available, and that orthodox scientists and doctors have driven the HP interventions, in the Cuban case. Many people internationally now know this, so once again claims by orthodox authorities that there is no evidence merely serves to show that either the authorities are making uninformed/unscientific statements, or that they are aware but are intentionally withholding information. Either way, confidence is destroyed and leads to groups of people questioning what they are told…
Final Conclusions
The attacks against homeopathy in general and HP in particular will almost certainly continue. If we can achieve a significant level of agreement then we would be able to answer challenges to HP with a single, cohesive, evidence-based, and generally united response. This would be a significant improvement to the existing situation.
Reference 7 is the following article: Bracho G, Varela E, Fernández R et al. Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for Leptospirosis epidemic control. Homeopathy 2010; 99: 156-166. The crucial bit if this paper are as follows:
A homeoprophylactic formulation was prepared from dilutions of four circulating strains of Leptospirosis. This formulation was administered orally to 2.3 million persons at high risk in an epidemic in a region affected by natural disasters. The data from surveillance were used to measure the impact of the intervention by comparing with historical trends and non-intervention regions.
After the homeoprophylactic intervention a significant decrease of the disease incidence was observed in the intervention regions. No such modifications were observed in non-intervention regions. In the intervention region the incidence of Leptospirosis fell below the historic median. This observation was independent of rainfall.
The homeoprophylactic approach was associated with a large reduction of disease incidence and control of the epidemic. The results suggest the use of HP as a feasible tool for epidemic control, further research is warranted.
The paper thus describes little more than an observational study. It shows that one region was less affected than another. I think it is quite clear that this could have many reasons which are unrelated to the homeopathic immunisation. Even the authors are cautious and speak in their conclusions not of a causal effect but of an “association”.
The 2012 data cited in the text remains unpublished; until it is available for public scrutiny, it is impossible to confirm that it is sound and meaningful.
Reference 8 refers to this article: Golden I, Bracho G. Adaptability of homœoprophylaxis in endemic, epidemic and stable background conditions. Homœopathic Links 2009; 22: 211-213. I have no access to this paper (if someone does, please fill us in) but, judging from both its title and the way it is described in the text, it does not seem to show reliable data about the efficacy of homeopathic immunisation.
So, is it true that “evidence does exist to support claims regarding the effectiveness of homeopathic immunisation”?
I do not think so!
Immunisation is by no means a trivial matter; wrong decisions in this area have the potential to cost the lives of millions. Therefore proofs of efficacy need to be published in peer-reviewed journals of high standing. These findings need then be criticised, replicated and re-criticised and re-replicated. Only when there is a wide consensus about the efficacy/safety or lack of efficacy/safety of a new form of immunisation, can it be generally accepted and implemented into clinical practice.
The current consensus about homeopathic immunisation is that it is nothing less than dangerous phantasy. Those who promote this quackery should be publicly exposed as charlatans of the worst kind.
Some practitioners of alternative medicine (doctors, naturopaths, chiropractors and others) earn a lot of money with the claim that chelation therapy (an effective mainstream treatment for acute heavy metal poisoning) is an effective means to treat cardiovascular disease. However, the notion is controversial and implausible. Several systematic reviews of the best evidence concluded less than optimistically:
The available data do not support the use of chelation in cardiovascular diseases.
More recently, important new evidence has emerged. The largest study of chelation therapy (TACT) ever conducted cost ~ $ 30 million and concluded that among stable patients with a history of MI, use of an intravenous chelation regimen with disodium EDTA, compared with placebo, modestly reduced the risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes, many of which were revascularization procedures. These results provide evidence to guide further research but are not sufficient to support the routine use of chelation therapy for treatment of patients who have had an MI.
At the time, the TACT trial was heavily and rightly criticised for a whole host of reasons. For instance, because of the result of the FDA inspection of the highest accruing TACT site:
- The investigators didn’t conduct the investigation in accordance with the signed statement and investigational plan. Several examples were given of shoddy procedures, prefilled forms, and failure to train personnel.
- Failure to report promptly to the IRB all unanticipated problems involving risk to human subjects or others. Examples are given, including failure to report the deaths of patients on the study in a timely fashion (in one case the death wasn’t reported to the IRB until four months later; in another case it was never reported at all). In other cases, adverse event reports were not submitted to the IRB.
- Failure to prepare or maintain adequate case histories with respect to observations and data pertinent to the investigation.
- Investigational drug disposition records are not adequate with respect to dates, quantity, and use by subjects.
Despite these problems, the study was published in JAMA, albeit with a very critical editorial:
Differential dropout in TACT suggests unmasking, but the problem of intentional unblinding is more concerning. The sponsors of the trial, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), were unblinded throughout the trial. The National Institutes of Health policy unwisely allows the sponsor access to unblinded trial data, and both organizations sent observers to the closed sessions of the data monitoring committee. This gave them access to confidential data during each of the 11 interim analyses. The unblinding of the study sponsor represents a serious deviation from acceptable standards of conduct for supervision of clinical trials. If a pharmaceutical company sponsoring a trial were allowed access to actual outcome data during the study, there would be major objections. Like any sponsor, the NHLBI and NCCAM cannot be considered unbiased observers. These agencies made major financial commitments to the trial and may intentionally or inadvertently influence study conduct if inappropriately unblinded during the study…
Given the numerous concerns with this expensive, federally funded clinical trial, including missing data, potential investigator or patient unmasking, use of subjective end points, and intentional unblinding of the sponsor, the results cannot be accepted as reliable and do not demonstrate a benefit of chelation therapy. The findings of TACT should not be used as a justification for increased use of this controversial therapy.
Orac, makes several further critical points about the published trial:
First, the primary endpoint (i.e., the aggregated serious cardiovascular events) did indeed show a modest difference, namely 30% of placebo subjects versus 26.5% of the EDTA chelation subjects (hazard ratio 0.82 for chelation). However, one notes that the result is just barely statistically significant, p = 0.035, with the 99% confidence interval for the hazard ratio ranging from 0.69 to 0.99. (The predetermined level for statistical significance for purposes of this study was 0.036; so this is statistically significant by the barest margin.) More importantly, if you look at the individual endpoints that make up that aggregate, there was no statistically significant difference in death, myocardial infarction, stroke, coronary revascularization, and hospitalization for angina. Subgroup analysis (always a questionable analysis that requires replication, even when preplanned, as in TACT) purported to show a much greater benefit for diabetics, with a hazard ratio of 0.61 (p=0.002), while patients without diabetes showed no statistically significant difference in any of the outcome measures, including the aggregated total bad outcomes.
Now a paper that has just emerged describes the intent-to-treat comparison of this trial in patients with diabetes.
This was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, 2 × 2 factorial multicenter randomized trial of 1,708 post-myocardial infarction (MI) patients ≥50 years of age and with creatinine ≤2.0 mg/dL randomized to receive 40 EDTA chelation or placebo infusions plus 6 caplets daily of a 28-component multivitamin-multimineral mixture or placebo. The primary end point was a composite of total mortality, MI, stroke, coronary revascularization, or hospitalization for angina.
Median age was 65 years, 18% were female, 94% were Caucasian, 37% were diabetic, 83% had prior coronary revascularization, and 73% were on statins. Five-year Kaplan-Meier estimates for the primary end point was 31.9% in the chelation + high-dose vitamin group, 33.7% in the chelation + placebo vitamin group, 36.6% in the placebo infusion + active vitamin group, and 40.2% in the placebo infusions + placebo vitamin group. The reduction in primary end point by double active treatment compared with double placebo was significant (hazard ratio 0.74, 95% CI 0.57-0.95, P = .016). In patients with diabetes, the primary end point reduction of double active compared with double placebo was more pronounced (hazard ratio 0.49, 95% CI 0.33-0.75, P < .001).
The authors conclude that in stable post-MI patients on evidence-based medical therapy, the combination of oral high-dose vitamins and chelation therapy compared with double placebo reduced clinically important cardiovascular events to an extent that was both statistically significant and of potential clinical relevance.
I fear that these conclusions are erroneous and misleading: the marginally positive finding might have nothing to do with chelation per se; most likely they are due to the fact that the ‘vitamin’ mixture administered along with chelation contained ingredients like heparin and procaine which are potentially beneficial for cardiovascular conditions. Moreover, the placebo contained a considerable amount of glucose which could easily explain the better outcome of the diabetic subgroup receiving the verum – in other words, the verum generated better results not because it was effective but because the ‘placebo’ had detrimental effects.
