MD, PhD, MAE, FMedSci, FRSB, FRCP, FRCPEd.

Monthly Archives: August 2015

A recent article promised to provide details of the ’10 most mind-numbingly stupid alternative therapies’. Naturally I was interested what these might be. In descending order they are, according to the author of the most enjoyable piece:

10 VEGA TESTING

9 REIKI

8 CRYSTAL HEALING

7 URINE THERAPY

6 DETOXIFYING FOOT PADS

5 WHEAT-GRASS ENEMAS

4 PSYCHIC SURGERY

3 OZONE THERAPY

2 CUPPING THERAPY

1 HOMEOPATHY

This is quite a list, I have to admit. Despite some excellent choices, I might disagree with a few of them. Detoxifying foot pads will take care of a common and most annoying problem: smelly feet; therefore it cannot be all bad. And drinking your own urine can even be a life-saver! Lets assume someone has a kidney or bladder cancer. Her urine might, at one stage, be bright red with blood. The urine therapy enthusiast would realise early that something is wrong with her, go and see a specialist, get early treatment and save her life. No, no no, I cannot fully condemn urine therapy!

The other thing with the list is that one treatment which is surely mind-bogglingly stupid is missing: CHELATION THERAPY.

I have previously written about this form of treatment and pointed out that some practitioners of alternative medicine (doctors, naturopaths, chiropractors and others) earn a lot of money claiming that chelation therapy (a well-established mainstream treatment for acute heavy metal poisoning) is an effective therapy for cardiovascular and many other diseases. However, this claim is both implausible and not evidence-based. Several systematic reviews of the best evidence concluded less than optimistically:

…more controlled studies are required to determine the efficacy of chelation therapy in cardiovascular disease before it can be used broadly in the clinical setting.

The best available evidence does not support the therapeutic use of EDTA chelation therapy in the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

Given the potential of chelation therapy to cause severe adverse effects, this treatment should now be considered obsolete.

The available data do not support the use of chelation in cardiovascular diseases.

Despite all this, the promotion of chelation continues unabated. An Australian website, ironically entitled ‘LEADERS IN INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE’, might stand for many others when it informs its readers about chelation therapy. Here is a short passage:

Chelation therapy has the ability to remove the calcium from artery plaques as well as remove toxic ions, reduce free radical damage and restore circulation to all tissues of the body. A growing number of physicians use chelation therapy to reverse the process of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and as an alternative to angioplasty and bypass surgery.

Chelation therapy is a treatment to be considered for all conditions of reduced blood flow (coronary artery disease, cerebral vascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, angina, vertigo, tinnitus, senility), any situations of heavy metal toxicity or tissue overload and various chronic immune system disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. Intravenous vitamin C is useful for the treatment of chronic and acute infections, fatigue, pre- and post-surgery and to boost the immune system while undergoing cancer therapies.

Not bad, isn’t it. How come such mind-numbing stupidity escaped the author of the above article? Was it an oversight? Was the choice just too overwhelming? Or did he not think chelation was all that funny? I ought to mention that it is not at all harmless like sampling your own urine or having a Reiki healer sending some ‘healing energy’.

Whatever the reason, I hope for an up-date of the list, he will consider chelation as a seriously mind-numbing contender.

A short report about a Scottish legal case is worth a mention, I think.

Honor Watt, 73 had sued Lothian Health Board after the authority stopped in June 2013 to provide homeopathic treatments to patients. Ms Watt, an arthritis sufferer, had previously received homeopathic medicine for this condition. There is, of course, no good evidence that homeopathic remedies are better than placebos for this (or any other) disease.

Ms Watt’s lawyers decided to challenge the board’s decision in the Court of Session claiming the health board acted illegally. There is reason to believe that Ms Watt was assisted by a professional organisation of homeopathy ( the judgement mentions that the Board’s submission stated that ‘the real force behind the petition was a charity, not the petitioner’).

In any case, Watt’s legal team claimed the Equality Act 2010 placed an obligation on the health board to ask their patients for their views on whether homeopathy should be continued to be funded. The legislation states that public sector organisations have an obligation to consider their decisions on the terms of what is called a public sector equality duty.

The case went to court and the judge, Lord Uist, recently ruled that the health board had acted legally. He therefore refused to overturn the board’s original decision. In a written judgement issued on Friday, Lord Uist confirmed that the health board acted correctly: “It is clear to me from an examination of the relevant documents that the board was from the outset consciously focusing on its PSED.”

The judgement explains that Ms Watt was first referred to the homeopathic service in 2003 when she was suffering from anxiety. Later, she was given a homeopathic medicine for her arthritis after telling her doctor that conventional medicine wasn’t controlling her problems with this condition. In January 2014, she had a final appointment with the homeopathic service and told that she was no longer entitled to homeopathic treatment. However, the judgement states that Ms Watt still receives a prescription of homeopathic medicine.

Lothian Health Board decided to end homeopathic provision after concluding the money would be better spent on conventional treatments. The board made the decision after holding a consultation exercise and concluding that only few NHS users would be affected by their decision. In a report, the reasons for why the board should stop spending money on homeopthy were set out.

Judge Uist confirmed that this report “stated that the withdrawal of funding for homeopathic services would have a limited negative impact on patients and staff, the majority of patients were from more affluent areas and it was felt that they could perhaps afford to self fund alternative provision.”

Ms Watt’s lawyers claimed that the board didn’t do enough to seek the views of those who used the service. They argued that the board broke the terms of the 2010 Equality Act. After examining the evidence, Judge Uist  concluded, however, that the health board had done everything in its power and had made the correct decision: “I am satisfied that reduction of the board’s decision of June 26 2013 would result only in a waste of time and public funds as it would inevitably result in exactly the same decision being taken by the board.”

From my perspective, this is an important decision. As a physician, I naturally dislike not giving patients what they want. However, I dislike it even more when there is not enough money for other patients to have essential treatments. Thus it is obvious that harsh decisions have to be made in order to spend the available funds as rationally as possible – and that, of course, means that treatments for which there is no good evidence must not be funded from public money. Homeopathy clearly falls in that category.

As I am not a lawyer, I see this case with the eyes of a medic and researcher. For me, it is about the age-old question: should patients get the treatment they want or the treatment they need? For me, health care is not a supermarket where people can their trolleys with everything they happen to fancy. For me, health care is not about satisfying the ‘wants’; it is about coping with the needs of people. For me, this is a question of medical ethics. For me, the Scottish judgement is spot on.

Anthroposophic medicine is based on Rudolf Steiner’s mystical ideas. It is popular in Germany and is slowly also spreading to other countries.  Anthroposophic drugs are prepared according to ancient notions of alchemy and are fly in the face of modern pharmacology. Anthroposophic doctors treat all sorts of diseases, and their treatments  include anthroposophic medications, and a range of other modalities.

A recent paper reported a secondary analysis from an observational study of 529 children with respiratory or ear infections (RTI/OM) <18 years from Europe and the USA. Their caregivers had chosen to consult physicians offering either anthroposophic (A-) or conventional (C-) treatment for RTI/OM.

During the 28-day follow-up antibiotics were prescribed to 5.5% of A-patients and 25.6% of C-patients (P < 0.001); the unadjusted odds ratio for non-prescription in A- versus C-patients was 6.58 (95%-CI 3.45-12.56); after adjustment for demographics and morbidity it was 6.33 (3.17-12.64). Antibiotic prescription rates in recent observational studies with similar patients in similar settings, ranged from 31.0% to 84.1%. Compared to C-patients, A-patients also had much lower use of analgesics, somewhat quicker symptom resolution, and higher caregiver satisfaction. Adverse drug reactions were infrequent (2.3% in both groups) and not serious.

What can we conclude from these data?

Not a lot, I fear!

The authors of the study are a little more optimistic than I; they conclude that this analysis from a prospective observational study under routine primary care conditions showed a very low use of antibiotics and analgesics/antipyretics in children treated for RTI/OM by physicians offering AM therapy, compared to current practice in conventional therapy settings (antibiotics prescribed to 5% versus 26% of A- and C-patients, respectively, during days 0–28; antipyretics prescribed to 3% versus 26%). The AM treatment entailed no safety problem and was not associated with delayed short-term recovery. These differences could not explained by differences in demographics or baseline morbidity. The low antibiotic use is consistent with findings from other studies of paediatric RTI/OM in AM settings.

They are clearly careful to avoid causal inferences; but are they implying them? I would like to know what you think.

 

Being constantly on the look-out for new, good quality articles on alternative therapy which suggest that a treatment might actually work, I was excited to find not just one or two but four recent publications on an old favourite of mine: massage therapy.

The first paper described a study aimed to investigate the effect of whole body massage on the vital signs, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores and arterial blood gases (ABG) in trauma ICU patients.

In a randomized, double-blind trial, 108 trauma ICU patients received whole body massage or routine care only. The patients vital signs; systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), respiratory rate (RR), pulse rate (PR), Temperature (T), GCS score and ABG parameters were measured in both groups before the intervention and 1 hour and 3 hours after the intervention. The patient in experimental group received full body massage in 45 minute by a family member.

Significant differences were observed between experimental and control groups in SBP 1 hour and 3 hours after intervention, DBP, RR and PR 1 hour after intervention, and GCS 1 hour and 3 hours after intervention. Significant differences were also observed between experimental and control groups in O2 saturation, PH and pO2. No significant differences between experimental and control groups were noted in Temperature, pCO2 and HCO3.

The authors concluded that massage therapy is a safe and effective treatment in intensive care units to reduce patient’s physical and psychological problems. Therefore the use of massage therapy is recommended to clinical practice as a routine method.

The second paper reported a clinical trial on 66 male and female nurses working in intensive care units of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran.

Patients were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The Occupational Stress Inventory (OSI) (Osipow and Spokane, 1987) was completed by participants of the two groups before, immediately after, and 2 weeks after the intervention. Swedish massage was performed on participants of the experimental group for 25 min in each session, twice a week for 4 weeks.

Results showed a significant difference in favour of the massage therapy in overall mean occupation stress scores between experimental and control groups two weeks after the intervention.

The authors concluded that it is recommended that massage, as a valuable noninvasive method, be used for nurses in intensive care units to reduce their stress, promote mental health, and prevent the decrease in quality of nursing work life.

The third paper described a randomized controlled trial evaluating the effects of post-operative massage in patients undergoing abdominal colorectal surgery.

One hundred twenty-seven patients were randomized to receive a 20-min massage or social visit and relaxation session on postoperative days 2 and 3. Vital signs and psychological well-being (pain, tension, anxiety, satisfaction with care, relaxation) were assessed before and after each intervention.

Post-operative massage significantly improved the patients’ perception of pain, tension, and anxiety, but overall satisfaction was unchanged.

The authors concluded that massage may be beneficial during postoperative recovery for patients undergoing abdominal colorectal surgery. Further studies are warranted to optimize timing and duration and to determine other benefits in this clinical setting.

The fourth paper reported a systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness of massage on the short- and long-term outcomes of pre-term infants.

Literature searches were conducted using the PRISMA framework. Validity of included studies was assessed using criteria defined by the Cochrane Collaboration. Assessments were carried out independently by two reviewers with a third reviewer to resolve differences.

Thirty-four studies met the inclusion criteria, 3 were quasi-experimental, 1 was a pilot study, and the remaining 30 were RCTs. The outcomes that could be used in the meta-analysis and found in more than three studies suggested that massage improved daily weight gain by 0.53 g, and resulted in a significant improvement in mental scores by 7.89 points. There were no significant effects on length of hospital stay, caloric intake, or weight at discharge. Other outcomes were not analyzed either because the units of measurement varied between studies, or because means and standard deviations were not provided by the authors. The quality of the studies was variable with methods of randomization and blinding of assessment unclear in 18 of the 34 trials.

The authors concluded that massage therapy could be a comforting measure for infants in the NICU to improve weight gain and enhance mental development. However, the high heterogeneity, the weak quality in some studies, and the lack of a scientific association between massage and developmental outcomes preclude making definite recommendations and highlight the need for further RCTs to contribute to the existing body of knowledge.

I am not saying that these articles are flawless, nor that I agree with all of their conclusion. What I am trying to indicate is that we finally have here an alternative therapy that is promising.

Alternative?

When I worked in Germany and later in Austria, massage was considered to be entirely mainstream. It was only after I had moved to the UK when I realised that, in English-speaking countries, it is mostly considered to be alternative. Perhaps this classification is wrong?

Perhaps we should differentiate according to what type of massage we are talking about. In the realm of alternative medicine – and not just there, I suppose – this seems good advice indeed.

The above papers are about classical massage therapy, but there are some types pf massage which are less than conventional: aura-massage, Marma massage, Indian head massage, shiatsu etc. etc. the list seems endless. These are alternative in more than one sense, and they have one thing in common: there is, as far as I can see, no good evidence to show that they do anything to human health.

My conclusion therefore is that, even with something as common as massage therapy, we need to be careful not to be roped in by the charlatans.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the many bogus claims made by chiropractors. One claim, however, namely the one postulating chiropractors can effectively treat low back pain with spinal manipulation, is rarely viewed as being bogus. Chiropractors are usually able to produce evidence that does suggest the claim to be true, and therefore even most critics of chiropractic back off on this particular issue.

But is the claim really true?

A recent trial might provide the answer.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of chiropractic spinal manipulative therapy (cSMT) to a sham intervention on pain (Visual Analogue Scale, SF-36 pain subscale), disability (Oswestry Disability Index), and physical function (SF-36 subscale, Timed Up and Go) by performing a randomized placebo-controlled trial at 2 Veteran Affairs Clinics.

Older veterans (≥ 65 years of age) who were naive to chiropractic were recruited. A total of 136 who suffered from chronic low back pain (LBP) were included in the study – with 69 being randomly assigned to cSMT and 67 to the sham intervention. Patients were treated twice per week for 4 weeks. The outcomes were assessed at baseline, 5, and 12 weeks post baseline.

Both groups demonstrated significant decrease in pain and disability at 5 and 12 weeks. At 12 weeks, there was no significant difference in pain and a statistically significant decline in disability scores in the cSMT group when compared to the control group. There were no significant differences in adverse events between the groups.

The authors concluded that cSMT did not result in greater improvement in pain when compared to our sham intervention; however, cSMT did demonstrate a slightly greater improvement in disability at 12 weeks. The fact that patients in both groups showed improvements suggests the presence of a nonspecific therapeutic effect.

Hold on, I hear you say, this does not mean that cSMT is a placebo in the treatment of LBP! There are other studies that yield positive results. Let’s not cherry-pick our evidence!

Absolutely correct! To avoid cherry-picking, lets see what the current Cochrane review tells us about cSMT and chronic LBP. Here is the conclusion of this review based on 26 RCTs: High quality evidence suggests that there is no clinically relevant difference between SMT and other interventions for reducing pain and improving function in patients with chronic low-back pain.

Convinced?

I just came across an announcement which could be important. Here are what I consider the important passages:

The Federal Trade Commission will host a public workshop on Monday, September 21, 2015 in Washington, DC, to examine advertising for over-the-counter (OTC) homeopathic products…

Because of rapid growth in the marketing and consumer use of homeopathic products, the FTC is hosting a workshop to evaluate the advertising for such products. The workshop will bring together a variety of stakeholders, including medical professionals, industry representatives, consumer advocates, and government regulators.

The FTC invites the public to submit research, recommendations for topics of discussion, and requests to participate as panelists. The workshop will cover topics including:

  • A look at changes in the homeopathic market, its advertising, and what consumers know;
  • The science behind homeopathy and its effectiveness;
  • The effects of recent class actions against homeopathic product companies;
  • The application of Section 5 of the FTC Act to advertising claims for homeopathic products; and
  • Public policy concerns about the current regulation of homeopathic products.

Public comments can be submitted electronically. Paper submissions should be sent to: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite CC-5610 (Annex B), Washington, DC 20580, or delivered to: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, Constitution Center, 400 7th Street, SW, 5th Floor, Suite 5610 (Annex B), Washington, DC 20024. Paper submissions should reference the Homeopathic Medicine & Advertising Workshop both in the text and on the envelope. The deadline for submitting public comments is Friday, November 20, 2015.

The FTC also has set up an email box for anyone interested in being a panelist at the event or suggesting additional topics for discussion. It is [email protected] (link sends e-mail), and will be open until August 1, 2015.

The workshop is free and open to the public. It will be held at the Constitution Center, 400 7th St., SW, Washington, DC 20024. The Commission will publish a detailed agenda at a later date…

The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad…

In my view, this is a long overdue initiative. Consumers are constantly and outrageously misled by the advertising of homeopathic products. This has the potential to impact negatively on public health.

It would not surprise me, if homeopathy advocates were to try to swamp this event with their promotion of homeopathy. Therefore, I thought it was important to post the announcement on my blog, in the hope that as many scientifically minded people as possible might file their evidence and objections.

Medical ethics comprise a set of rules and principles which are essential for all aspects of medicine, including of course research. The main issues are:

  • Respect for autonomy – patients must have the right to refuse or choose their treatments.
  • Beneficence – researchers and clinicians must act in the best interest of the patient.
  • Non-maleficence – the expected benefits of interventions must outweigh their risks.
  • Justice – the distribution of health resources must be fair.
  • Respect for persons – patients must be treated with dignity.
  • Truthfulness and honesty – informed consent is an essential element in research and clinical practice.

While all of this has long been fairly standard in conventional health care, it is often neglected in alternative medicine. It is therefore timely to ask, how much of research in the realm of alternative medicine abides by the rules of medical ethics?

After more than two decades of involvement in this sector, I have serious and growing concerns. The subject is, of course complex, but the way I see it, in alternative medicine there are two main areas where medical ethics are violated with some regularity.

  1. Nonsensical research projects
  2. Lack of informed consent

NONSENSICAL RESEARCH PROJECTS

At best, nonsensical research is a waste of precious resources, at worst it violates the beneficence principle. In alternative medicine, nonsensical research seems to happen ad nauseam. Regular readers of this blog will have seen plenty of examples of such abuse – for instance, if researchers conduct a clinical trial of chiropractic spinal manipulation for improving the singing voices of choir singers, or homeopaths test whether their remedies enhance female fertility. Often, nonsensical research happens when naïve enthusiasts decide to dabble a bit in science in order to promote their trade – but without realising that research would require a minimum of education.

But there are other occasions when it seems that the investigators know only too well what they are doing. Take for instance the plethora of ‘pragmatic’ trials which are currently so much ‘en vogue’ in alternative medicine. They can be designed in such a way that their results must produce what the researchers intended to show; the ‘A+B versus B’ study design is a prominent and obvious example of this type of abuse which I have repeatedly written about on this blog.

I use the term ‘abuse’ intentionally, because that is precisely what it is, in my view. Nonsensical research abuses the willingness of patients to participate by misleading them that it is a worthwhile sacrifice. In reality it is an unethical attempt to generate findings that can mislead us all. Moreover, it gives science a bad name and can lead to patients’ unwillingness to take part in research that does need doing. The damage done by nonsensical research projects is therefore immeasurable.

INFORMED CONSENT

Informed consent is essential in research for protecting the interests of the volunteering patients. When a clinical trial is first conceived, the researchers need to work out all the details, write a protocol and submit it to their ethics committee. Their submission has to give evidence that all the participating patients have given informed consent in writing before they are enrolled into the study. That means, they have to be told the essential details about what might happen to them during the trial.

In a placebo-controlled trial of homeopathy, for instance, they might be told that they will receive either a homeopathic remedy or a placebo during the study period. They might also be informed that there is some encouraging evidence that the former works, and that the trial is designed to define to what extend this is so. Generating this knowledge, they might further be told, will help future patients and will be an important contribution to improving health care. Based on such phraseology, the ethics committee is likely to allow the study to go ahead, and patients are likely to agree to take part.

But, of course, this information is less than truthful. An honest and full information for patients would need to include the following points:

  • you will receive either a homeopathic remedy or a placebo,
  • the former contains no active molecules and the totality of the most reliable evidence does not show that it works for your condition,
  • this means that you will receive either a homeopathic or a conventional placebo,
  • neither of these can possibly help your condition,
  • the study can therefore not advance our knowledge in any way,
  • during the trial your condition will remain untreated which is likely to increase your suffering unnecessarily.

If any research team would truthfully disclose this information, no ethics committee would pass their protocol. If by some weird mistake they did, no patients would volunteer to participate in the study.

I have chosen here the example of homeopathy (because most readers will understand it quite easily), but I could have used almost any other alternative treatment. The issues are identical or very similar: informed consent is usually misinformed consent. If it were fully and truthfully informed, it would neither pass the hurdle of the essential ethics approval nor would it lend itself to recruiting sufficiently large numbers of patients.

CONCLUSION

There are, I think, very serious concerns about the ethical standards in alternative medicine research. I have been banging on about these issues since many years (for instance here and here and here and here). Predictably, this did not find much resonance in the realm of alternative medicine. Regrettably, very few ethicists have so far taken this subject seriously; they seem to feel that these problems are trivial compared to the important issues medical ethics face in conventional health care. I remain unconvinced that this is true and believe it is high time to systematically address the ethics of alternative medicine.

Conventional cough syrups do not have the best of reputations – but the repute of homeopathic cough syrups is certainly not encouraging. So what should one do with such a preparation? Forget about it? No, one conducts a clinical trial, of course! Not just any old trial but one where science, ethics and common sense are absent. Here are the essentials of a truly innovative study that, I think, has all of these remarkable qualities:

The present prospective observational study investigated children affected by wet acute cough caused by non-complicated URTIs, comparing those who received the homeopathic syrup versus those treated with the homeopathic syrup plus antibiotic. The aims were: 1) to assess whether the addition of antibiotics to a symptomatic treatment had a role in reducing the severity and duration of acute cough in a pediatric population, as well as in improving cough resolution; 2) to verify the safety of the two treatments. Eighty-five children were enrolled in an open study: 46 children received homeopathic syrup alone for 10 days and 39 children received homeopathic syrup for 10 days plus oral antibiotic treatment (amoxicillin/clavulanate, clarithromycin, and erythromycin) for 7 days. To assess cough severity we used a subjective verbal category-descriptive (VCD) scale. Cough VCD score was significantly (P < 0.001) reduced in both groups starting from the second day of treatment (−0.52 ± 0.66 in the homeopathic syrup group and −0.56 ± 0.55 in children receiving homeopathic syrup plus oral antibiotic treatment). No significant differences in cough severity or resolution were found between the two groups of children in any of the 28 days of the study. After the first week (day 8) cough was completely resolved in more than one-half of patients in both groups. Two children (4.3 %) reported adverse effects in the group treated with the homeopathic syrup alone, versus 9 children (23.1 %) in the group treated with the homeopathic syrup plus antibiotics (P = 0.020).

Conclusions

Our data confirm that the homeopathic treatment in question has potential benefits for cough in children as well, and highlight the strong safety profile of this treatment. Additional antibiotic prescription was not associated with a greater cough reduction, and presented more adverse events than the homeopathic syrup alone.

Let us be clear about what has happened here. I think, the events can be summarised as follows:

  • the researchers come across a homeopathic syrup (anyone who understands respiratory problems and/or therapeutics would be more than a little suspicious of this product, but this team is exceptional),
  • they decide to do a trial with it (a decision which would make some ethicists already quite nervous, but the ethics committee is exceptional too),
  • the question raises, what should the researchers give to the control group?
  • someone has the idea, why not compare our dodgy syrup against something that is equally dodgy, perhaps even a bit unsafe?
  • the researchers are impressed and ask: but what precisely could we use?
  • let’s take antibiotics; they are often used for acute coughs, but the best evidence fails to show that they are helpful and they have, of course, risks,
  • another member of the team adds: let’s use children, they and their mothers are unlikely to understand what we are up to,
  • the team is in agreement,
  • Boiron, the world’s largest producer of homeopathic products, accepts to finance the study,
  • a protocol is written,
  • ethics approval is obtained,
  • the trial is conducted and even published by a journal with the help of peer-reviewers who are less than critical.

And the results of the trial? Contrary to the authors’ conclusion copied above, they show that two bogus treatments are worse that one.

BOB’S YOUR UNCLE!

EVERYONE SEEMS HAPPY: THE RESEARCHERS CAN ADD AN ARTICLE TO THEIR PUBLICATION LIST, BOIRON HAS MORE ‘EVIDENCE’ IN FAVOUR OF HOMEOPATHY, AND THE ETHICS COMMITTEE SLEEP JUST AS SOUNDLY AS THE PEER-REVIEWERS.

While my last post was about the risk following some naturopaths’ advice, this one is about the effectiveness of naturopathic treatments. This is a complex subject, not least because naturopaths use a wide range of therapies (as the name implies, they pride themselves of employing all therapeutic means supplied by nature). Some of these interventions are clearly supported by good evidence; for instance, nobody would doubt the effectiveness of a healthy diet or the benefits of regular exercise. But what about all the other treatments naturopaths use? The best approach to find an answer might be to assess not each single therapy but to evaluate the entire package of the naturopathic approach, and not a single study but all such trials.

This is precisely what US researchers have recently done. The purpose of this interesting, new systematic review was to compile and consolidate research that has investigated the whole practice of naturopathic medicine as it is practiced in community settings in order to better assess the quantity and quality of the research, and clinical effect, if any.

In order to get included into the review, studies had to report results from multi-modal treatment delivered by North American naturopathic doctors. The effect size for each study was calculated; no meta-analysis was undertaken.

Fifteen studies met the authors’ inclusion criteria. They covered a wide range of chronic diseases. Most studies had low to medium risks of bias including acknowledged limitations of pragmatic trials. Effect sizes for the primary medical outcomes varied and were statistically significant in 10 out of 13 studies. A quality of life metric was included in all of the RCTs with medium effect size and statistical significance in some subscales.

The authors concluded that previous reports about the lack of evidence or benefit of naturopathic medicine (NM) are inaccurate; a small but compelling body of research exists. Further investigation is warranted into the effectiveness of whole practice NM across a range of health conditions.

This sounds like good news for naturopathy! However, there are several important caveats:

  • the authors seem to have only looked at US studies (naturopathy is a European tradition!),
  • the searches were done three years ago, and more recent data were thus omitted,
  • the authors included all sorts of investigations, even uncontrolled studies; only 6 were RCTs,
  • rigorous trials were very scarce; and for each condition, they were even more so,
  • the authors mention the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews implying that they followed them but, in fact, they did not.

My biggest concern, however, is something else. It relates to the interventions tested in these studies. The authors claim that their results table provides full details on this issue but this is unfortunately not true. All we have by way of an explanation is the authors’ remark that the interventions tested in the studies of their review included diet counseling and nutritional recommendations, specific home exercises and physical activity recommendations, deep breathing techniques or other stress reduction strategies, dietary supplements including vitamins, hydrotherapy, soft-tissue manual techniques, electrical muscle stimulation, and botanical medicines.

Survey data from two US states tell us that the most commonly prescribed naturopathic therapeutics are botanical medicines (51% of visits in Connecticut, 43% in Washington), vitamins (41% and 43%), minerals (35% and 39%), homeopathy (29% and 19%) and allergy treatments (11% and 13%). They also inform us that the mean length of a consultation with an US naturopath is about 40 minutes.

I think, this puts things into perspective. If I advise a patient with diabetes or hypertension or coronary heat disease to follow an appropriate diet, exercise and to adhere to some stress reduction program, if in addition I show empathy and compassion during a 40 minute consultation and make sure that my advise is taken seriously and subsequently adhered to, the outcome is likely to be positive. Naturopaths may elect to call this package of intervention ‘naturopathy’, however, I would call it good conventional medicine.

The problem, I think is clear: good therapeutic advice is effective but it is not naturopathy, and it cannot be used to justify the use of doubtful interventions like homeopathy or all sorts of dodgy supplements. Testing whole treatment packages of this nature can therefore lead to highly misleading results, particularly if the researchers draw unwarranted conclusions about specific schools of health care.

Proponents of alternative medicine regularly stress the notion that their treatments are either risk-free or much safer than conventional medicine. This assumption may be excellent for marketing bogus treatments, however, it neglects that even a relatively harmless therapy can become dangerous, if it is ineffective. Here is yet again a tragic reminder of this undeniable fact.

Japanese doctors reported the case of 2-year-old girl who died of precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the most common cancer in children.

She had no remarkable medical history. She was transferred to a hospital because of respiratory distress and died 4 hours after arrival. Two weeks before her death, she had developed a fever of 39 degrees C, which subsided after the administration of a naturopathic herbal remedy. One week before death, she developed jaundice, and her condition worsened on the day of death.

Laboratory test results on admission to hospital showed a markedly elevated white blood cell count. Accordingly, the cause of death was suspected to be acute leukaemia. Forensic autopsy revealed the cause of death to be precursor B-cell ALL.

With the current advancements in medical technology, the 5-year survival rate of children with ALL is nearly 90%. However, in this case, the child’s parents had opted for naturopathy instead of evidence-based medicine. They had not taken her to a hospital for a medical check-up or immunisation since she was an infant. If the child had received routine medical care, she would have a more than 60% chance of being alive 5 years after diagnosis of ALL.

The authors of this case-report concluded that the parents should be accused of medical neglect regardless of their motives.

Such cases are tragic and infuriating in equal measure. There is no way of knowing how often this sort of thing happens; we rely entirely on anecdotes because systematic research is hardly feasible.

While anecdotes of this nature have their obvious limitations, they are nevertheless important. They can serve as poignant reminders that alternative remedies might be relatively harmless, but this does not necessarily apply to all alternative practitioners. Moreover, they should make us redouble our efforts to inform the public responsibly about the all too often trivialized risks of alternative medicine.

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