Pre-diabetes is a significant public health problem worldwide. India has a very high rate of progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes, 75-78 per thousand persons per year.
The objective of this study was to test the efficacy of individualized homeopathic medicinal products (HMPs) against placebos in preventing the progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes. It was designed as a ix-month, double-blind, randomized (1:1), two parallel arms, placebo-controlled trial.
Sixty participants with pre-diabetes were treated either with:
- HMPs plus yoga therapy (YT; n = 30)
- or with identical-looking placebos plus YT (n = 30).
Pre-diabetes was defined as elevated fasting blood glucose (FBS) of 100-125 mg/dL, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) value of 5.7-6.4%, and/or an elevated blood glucose level 2 hrs. after an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) of 140-199 mg/dL (ICD-10-R73.03).
The primary efficacy endpoint was the proportion of participants progressing from pre-diabetes to diabetes, measured after three and six months. Secondary outcomes comprised of fasting blood glucose (FBS), oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), glycated hemoglobin percentage (HbA1c%), lipid profile, liver enzymes (alanine transaminase, aspartate transaminase), urea and creatinine, and Measure Yourself Medical Outcome Profile version 2 (MYMOP-2); all measured after 3 and 6 months.
The proportion of participants converted from pre-diabetics to diabetics (n/N; n = diabetics, N = prediabetics) was significantly less in the verum group than control: HbA1C% (month 3: verum – 2/30 versus control – 11/30, p = 0.003; month 6: 3/30 vs. 2/30, p = 0.008), OGTT (month 3: 0/30 vs. 8/30, p = 0.015; month 6: 0/30 vs. 1/30, p = 0.008), but not according to FBS (month 3: 1/30 vs. 1/30, p = 0.779; month 6: 1/30 vs. 3/30, p = 0.469). Several secondary outcomes also revealed significant improvements in the verum group than in placebo: HbA1C% (p < 0.001), OGTT (p = 0.001), serum ALT (p = 0.031), creatinine (p = 0.012), and MYMOP-2 profile scores (p < 0.001). Sulphur, Bryonia alba, and Thuja occidentalis were the most frequently indicated medicines. Thus, HMPs outperformed placebos by successfully preventing the progression of pre-diabetes to diabetes.
The authors concluded that HMPs with YT produced significantly better effects than placebos plus YT with moderate to large effect sizes. Overall, HMPs outperformed placebos by successfully preventing the progression of pre-diabetes to diabetes.
This is an odd study with very odd results; it begs several questions and comments, e.g.:
- If the aim was to test the efficacy of individualized homeopathic medicinal products (HMPs) against placebos in preventing the progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes, why add yoga as a treatment?
- What were the influences of other factors such as diet and life-style, and were these the same in both groups?
- The sample size seems far too small for such firm conclusions.
- What might be the alleged mechanism of action?
- Why not publish such a study that has allegedly important results in one of the many established journals dealing with diabetes?
I fear that this trial is merely one in the long list of poor quality, false-positive homeopathy studies that are currently emerging from India. I predict that the findings will not even be taken seriously enough to be submitted to a replication by established diabetes researchers.
24 Responses to Individualized homeopathic medicines in preventing the progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel-arm trial
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This is funny:
“Interventions
Verum: HMPs plus yoga therapy (YT; n = 30); control: identical-looking placebos plus YT (n = 30).”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1550830724000582
So the patients were given a good placebo and a bad placebo. And what did the work? Individualized yoga?
All the statistics stuff is rubbish. The question is: HOW did they cheat?
How many tries did they make to get at last ONE study with a positive result?
And, just a simple question: WHAT were the patients given as homeopathic remedies?
As long as the FULL text is not available online for free I dare say, that this “study” is fraud.
Since homeopathic remedies are so incredibly cheap it should be possible to enroll at least 1000 participants. India is a large country, so there fore sure are enough probands for free…
And there it looms: the monster of the law of the high numbers….
Homeopathy actually is walking at the limits of minute differences … from the average line.
Too bad.
Thanx “ama” for proving again that people on this page do not read about homeopathy or about homeopathic research.
First, there are around 500 clinical trials published in peer review journals, and the vast majority of them have found evidence of benefit with statistical significance. However, when the researchers have only reviewed studies with 150 or more subjects and when the studies have a “perfect” Jahad score (5 out of 5, a very rare score for ALL types of research), then in these “standards,” there are only a handful of studies, still several of which have shown efficacy of homeopathy.
As for the list of homeopathic remedies…I guess you choose to NOT read the study. “How convenient” said the ChurchLady.
And why was this study not published in a diabetes journal? Hmmm…it is almost as though some people here have no idea how biased and unscientific most medical journals are. Just having the word “homeopathy” in an article often lleads to an editor declining to publish it. Obviously, people here don’t have a clue. I wonder why.
Finally, for the record, yoga was provided to all subjects…and so, this doesn’t muddy the waters. Also for the record, the control group was given an identical placebo.
@Dana Ullman
Wow! That’s more than 2 clinical trials per year on average over all of homeopathy’s history! And of course those water-shaking clowns think that this is quite an impressive number. And it is – impressively low.
No doubt with ‘peers’ being other water-shaking clowns who are equally clueless about science, and fail to see even colossal blunders.
Then how come homeopathy is not taken seriously by real doctors and real scientists? After all, they have had 228 years in which to show that shaking plain water turns it into medicine.
The reason of course is that so far, those clowns failed to come up with even one – just ONE – homeopathic preparation that shows clear, consistent and independently repeatable effects.
Those few positive outcomes of homeopathic trials can be chalked up to bias, incompetence and statistical noise. This notion is also supported by the fact that effect sizes diminish with increasing study quality – and the best studies generally find no effect beyond placebo.
Homeopathy is tremendously popular throughout the world…France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India, Pakistan, but you wouldn’t know this when you think being blind is evidence of your method of doing science…#LOL.
And HISTORY of homeopathy’s successes is even more substantial than controlled clinical trials. Historians note that the primary reason that homeopathy became popular in the 19th century is due to its impressive successes in treating the various infectious disease epidemics of that era.
You seem to forgot that allopathic medicine’s successes are primarily due to the ecomonic powers, not scientific ones…
@Dana Ullman wrote:
“You seem to forgot that allopathic medicine’s successes are primarily due to the ecomonic powers, not scientific ones…”
You IGNORE the most important driving forces of all for homeopathy in, say, Germany: paid advertising by shills. Actually it is organized crime.
Part of the criminal advertising is making public opinion surveys. They are an easy way to cheat and forge.
Here we have an example:
“Wie die DHU eine Umfrage umlügt.”
http://www.allaxys.com/~kanzlerzwo/index.php?topic=10036.0
Which reminds me of the German association of homeopathic doctors (DZVhÄ). For a number of years they were not able to write even a single article for their very own blog. Which means that they rather choose paid PR writers.
Oh well, let me quote:
“In Germany the association of homeopathic MDs, the DZVhAe, was not even able to get its own blog working. Claiming to have about 7000 members (while in reality it was much less), these guys were not even able to get together some few articles OVER YEARS! See this statistics:
2018: zero
2017: zero
2016: zero
2015: 1 blog text
2014: 6 blog texts
2013: 8 blog texts
2012: 23 blog texts
2011: 30 blog texts
2010: 21 blog texts”
Which reminds me, that Dana Ullman OF COURSE DOES KNOW THIS. Why so? Answer: Because I had written that in this very blog of Edzard Ernst:
https://edzardernst.com/2024/01/it-is-unethical-to-offer-or-endorse-alternative-medicine/#comment-149733
Obviously homeopathy is really bad for the brain. Leads to delusions of grandeur, impaired vision, bad memory, garbled selective reading, and so on.
And there is something homeopathic with homeopathy: it works the better the less you take it. 🙂
A very evil compulsion is massification. When many people believe the same thing, they easily come to the conclusion: Fuck off, millions of flies can’t be wrong.”
Konrad Lorenz, 1988
😉
@Dana Ullman
I can’t help but notice that you failed to name even one homeopathic preparation 12C+ that shows clear, consistent and independently repeatable effects. AGAIN.
And no, you can’t weasel yourself out of the necessity to come up with such a preparation, for the simple reason that you keep claiming that homeopathy absolutely has clinical effects, and that these effects stem from the shaken water that you keep promoting as a medicine. Yet you appear to concede that actual homeopathic preparations have no reliably measurable effects, yet treatments with those inert preparations do have an effect. Can you say ‘cognitive dissonance’?
…. everywhere where there are gullible people to be fleeced or made-up nationalistic ‘heritage’ to be boosted.
This argumentum ad populum is of course a well-known fallacy.
But let’s look at India, arguably the most homeofriendly country in the world, with its own Ministry of Quackery Propaganda. In India, there are about 300.000 water-shaking clowns vs. some 1.3 million real doctors. Why is this? Simple: India hasn’t got much money to spend on healthcare (some 2% of its GDP, IIRC), and homeopathy is an exceedingly cheap placebo treatment. And the vast majority of medical complaints resolve naturally, few people will notice that homeopathy doesn’t actually do anything except give them the illusion of healthcare. Unfortunately, the large-scale effect is still that India has appalling track records when it comes to child mortality (almost 4%), life expectancy (67 years) and general health index.
In richer countries, the trend is of course completely different: there, homeopathy is abandoned in healthcare systems, simply because it doesn’t do anything. There, homeopaths are just parasites, welcoming patients with minor, usually self-limiting ailments (the so-called ‘worried-well’), claiming success when those ailments resolve naturally.
Since you distrust scientifically proven medicine so much, you should hope never to become seriously ill, Mr. Ullman.
Your comment makes me wonder if you never even had to take pain medication, anesthetics before a surgery, or other form of real medicine?!
My advice: try homeopathy before your next surgery, dental appointment, etc. and find out if there´s a difference compared to your beloved sugar pills 😉
@Jashak
I’m reminded of the late John Benneth, a foaming homeoloon who frequently would post unhinged comments on this blog. He died from Parkinsons Disease in 2021 aged 69 and I wonder to what extent he embraced the conventional medicine he notionally scorned.
@Jashak
Hmm … now this makes me wonder what ‘remedy’ homeopaths use in case of dental caries … Homeopathically diluted sugar pills??
@Richard
that´s a hilarious thought… and probably true 😄.
Maybe as a dentist, Lenny could comment.
Of course having the word “homeopathy” in the title will lead to a piece being rejected out of hand, Dana. Homeopathy is bunk and has long been shown to be so. No editor worth their salt would want any such nonsense anywhere near their journal. The other reason the papers would be rejected is because homeopaths are not scientists and repeatedly produce “research” of such jaw-droppingly low quality that only their fellow loons would hold it to be credible.
You shout, you stamp, you lie, you obfuscate but still you fail to grasp the truth, Dana. You remain a pathetic and scientifically-ignorant clown of no consequence whatsoever.
You cant stop growth in the UK and as for India all I can say is that Edzard is going to be very busy deconstructing these trials in future. I look forward to this.
It must all be very frustrating for you though.
Hey Lenny…
Please tell us all how and why the Lancet and the BMJ have published high-quality studies on homeopathy multipel times…plus Pediatrics, Pediatrics Infectious Disease Journal, Cancer, The Oncologist, Rheumatology, and many others?
l
And let us not forget these studies published in Nature’s Scientific Reports:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-51319-w
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81843-y
Or…from Nature India:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nindia.2015.154
“the Lancet and the BMJ have published high-quality studies on homeopathy multipel times…plus Pediatrics, Pediatrics Infectious Disease Journal, Cancer, The Oncologist, Rheumatology, and many others”
… and you really think that proves anything?
I did not know you were THAT naive, Dana!
Dana says:
Naive for sure. He cant tell the difference between peer-reviewed journal article vs a news article.
https://www.nature.com/natindia/journal-information
And grasping at straws. He thinks Nature’s Scientific Reports is a great journal. It’s 5-yr impact factor is 4.9, which puts it at the bottom of the pile of Nature journals. LOL!
https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/about/journal-metrics#journal-metrics
I love it when a pseudo-skeptic belittles NATURE magazines. If medicine would only accept research from the highest impact journals AND only include studies that were replicated by independent scientists, MDs would have access to perhaps less than 5% of the drugs that they use today.
Please don’t pretend to forget the problems found in replication of the best known studies in conventional medicine…what should be called fake science.
Let us NOT FORGET the STRONG (!) evidence that Stanford professor found: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
If this doesn’t lead you all to STFU, then, you are just all pretending…and are all pseudo-skeptics.
Playing pigeon chess again, DUllman? Or grasping at straws?
Anyway, everyone on this blog knows you are just a pompous bogeyman who thinks he is very SMART and yet falls flat on his face in every discussion.
Good to know that most published research is fake science. I suppose that includes the handful of homeopathic studies published in “fake” science journals like Nature. I wondered if that would make Dana a pseudo-homeopath. However, most homeopaths like Dana wave around homeopathic studies that are published in real fake science journals. Therefore, Dana is nothing but a run-of-the-mill homeopath.
@Dana Ullman
Even if they are, then that does not mean that homeopathy is a viable system of medicine. Or, to use the well-known analogy: just because airplanes sometimes crash does not mean that flying carpets are a viable means of transportation.
You seem to be stumbling your way through life from pitfall to pitfall, from one fallacy to the next.
Also don’t forget that there are gradations of wrongness.
Real medicine, despite its spectacular progress in the past 200 years, may still be wrong in quite a lot of ways quite a lot of the time – but homeopathy is 100% wrong 100% of the time. The ‘Law’ of similars? Wrong, no evidence whatsoever for its viability. The The ‘Law’ of infinitesimals? Even more wrong, no evidence whatsoever for its viability, and readily contradicted by even the most cursory everyday observations. ‘Provings’? Don’t make me laugh. One must be a blithering idiot to believe that provings are a good way to test if a substance helps people with a particular ailment. Yet homeopaths staunchly defend all three of these ‘principles’.
As long as homeopathy cannot even come up with one ‘remedy’ that shows unequivocal, consistent and above all repeatable effects (and yes, many, many products from Big Pharma do), it is fully justified to conclude that it is total nonsense.
Dana Ullman asks for it. Okay, so here we are. This is an article by Aribert Deckers, written 23 years ago.
The important thing with medicine is: What are my chances to get better again? So the task for the producers of medicaments are quite easy: “PROVE IT!”
The important detail with that is: When a new patient shows up, what does he see when looking at all the others who took the medicament before him? The magic word is “reproducible results”.
The situation is absolutely simple. Just cross the swamp and see who survives.
http://ariplex.com/ama/amaswamp.htm
[*QUOTE*]
————————————————————-
What the quacks fear more than the Devil fears Holy Water
06/16/2011
05/28/2001
I wrote the text long ago, back in 2001. This is the original: http://www.ariplex.com/ama/amasumpf.htm
My thanks to Steelclaws, who now made an English translation. Here it is:
What the quacks fear more than the Devil fears Holy Water
A sensational title? That is true, but it is appropriate.
Let’s start the topic with a simple example, that of two paths through a swamp:
———————————————————————–
Swamp
Imagine that you have to travel through a swamp to get to the village of X.
There are two paths you can take for this village X: Path A and path B.
You know that out of 1000 people who have taken path A,
only 10 arrived alive in X.
You also know that out of 1000 people who have taken route B,
800 arrived alive in X.
Which way would you take?
———————————————————————–
You probably now have two thoughts:
1st, naturally to take the path B
2nd, to ask what does the example have to do with the title.
The answer will possibly amaze you: The above example has a devastating effect if you use it in a forum or a discussion.
You can test this: Use the example in a discussion about the impact and effect of evidence of remedies completely unexpectedly and without explanation.
Why, and that’s the sticking point, is there then an awkward silence? Why this fear?
Let’s analyse the whole issue.
The example has the two possibilities. Option A is a very dangerous path, B is a dangerous path, but much safer than A.
The choice between A and B will not go away. One of the two paths MUST be taken. But which one?
It does not take much thought to see that the path B provides a better probability of survival. So why should anyone take the greater risk of the path A?
Taking the path B, 800 arrived out of 1000. The survival probability is thus 80% (eighty percent).
10 out of 1000 arrived after taking the path A. The survival probability is therefore 1% (one percent).
When someone goes through the swamp, he can survive both the paths B and A. But he won’t know before taking one of the paths if he will survive.
Taking the path B is not a guarantee of survival. Why is it still better to follow it? Answer: Because it can be assumed that the probability of survival will not be very different compared to the previous attempts at taking the path B. The important concept is “reproducibility” (repeatability). If we send 1000 people over route B and 800 of them survive, then we can be reasonably sure that of the next 1000 also 800 will survive. But we can not predict which individuals will survive.
In daily life, the concept of reproducibility is not often considered – and in deciding “path A or path B?” one does not think much on the concept. It is simply assumed that – “if so many come through” – we’ll handle it as good as they did. But this is nothing but the practical implementation of the concept of reproducibility!
The reproducibility is one of the crucial points in medicine. Should you take drug A or drug B? Answer: You choose the drug whose results are reproducibly shown to be the best. Why should you settle for something worse?
The reproducibility in medications or treatments requires constant monitoring. It is possible that suddenly the drug won’t work any longer or previously unknown side effects occur. Some side effects appear only after a long delay.
The reproducibility is not for granted and it is not something unchangeable! They have to control it by constantly monitoring ALL cases.
This means statistics, statistics, statistics. Statistics help to save lives.
Based on the swamp example, the statistics say that 80% survive the path B and only 1% path A. Because of reproducibility, it will be better to take B in the future.
Concerning drugs, the statistics say that drug B is better than drug A. And so the trap snaps shut: would you take a drug where they conceal the probability of effectiveness?
What do you think of a manufacturer who bluntly declares that he was not accountable on the probability of effectiveness: You should take his treatments – and that’s it! …
“Not possible” you say. Unfortunately, however, as the many examples in recent years have shown again and again, it is very possible.
Instead of publishing the statistics on effectiveness, these manufacturers claim with barely surpassable impudence, for example, that their medicines and healing methods can not be tested – because you “must individualise the remedies for every person”.
Certainly, but the crocodiles in the swamp go individually to every traveller, and it is the bottom line whether a green or a black or a brown crocodile bites last. Dead is dead. And “dead is dead” also applies to people who need medicine! What counts is the number of survivors. If a treatment has not 1 or 2, but hundreds of individual drugs, why not? Then count the survivors of this form of treatment. Really simple.
Although simple, yet the statistics is withheld. One could speculate whether the statistics were perhaps too complicated, but that is not the case. Counting the survivors is really easy. Nevertheless, it is not done …
One might argue that it is not always a matter of life and death. That is correct. But if a person is sick, then there is the possibility 1) he will become healthy and possibility 2) he will not become healthy. And between sick and healthy it should be possible to distinguish So, it is not that difficult. But YET!, the manufacturers refuse.
What reason could there be to refuse to provide the evidence for the efficacy of a cure or a treatment, moreover, when such supposedly fantastic effectiveness is being advertised with?
If the drug is really that good, then it is logical that the proof can be provided without any doubt. Or maybe not …?
If the drug is, however, bogus, so – what then …? But that’s never the case, isn’t it, because otherwise the manufacturer would not advertise it with the claims of effectiveness. Or does it …?
Did you know, that in Germany there are sold every year for a two-digit sum of billions of Euros medicines and remedies for which there is NO evidence of effectiveness?
To summarize:
With a simple example it can be shown that reproducibility is the foundation of a reasonable (rational) medicine.
Only through continuous monitoring of effects and side effects – and their analysis – can the quality of a medicine be determined.
Even if there are variants of a medicine, a collated statistics can show its success or failure.
And yet – there are manufacturers who refuse to test for efficacy.
Which path would you take, A or B?
Aribert Deckers
————————————————————-
[*/QUOTE*]
Now, the path with only 10 of 1000 survivors is not very convincing. But there is a simple way to handle that: “We need more research!”
PR and lies do not a good medicine make!
Too late, Dana. Everyone already has apart from you.
With that death rate ama I would do some reseach as to whether I could go around the swamp, build a causeway and/or think outside the box. Us CAMists would not just stick to the choice of the two paths that the experts from vilages A and B tell us are the only way.
JK on Monday 15 April 2024 at 09:04:
“With that death rate ama I would do some reseach as to whether I could go around the swamp,”
No, there is no way out. Only path A and path B are possible.