Odontogenic infections are among the most common problems encountered in usual dental practice. The role and efficacy of complementary treatments such as individualized homeopathy are not well characterized.
This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial enrolled 60 patients with uncomplicated odontogenic infections. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either Individualized Homeopathy (IH, n=30) or Placebo (PL, n=30), in addition to non-medicinal management. Co-primary outcome measures included Visual Analog Scales for Pain (VAS-P) and Swelling (VAS-S). Secondary outcome measures comprised the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14) and time taken for complete symptom resolution (Ts). All outcomes were assessed at baseline, 3rd day, 7th day, and 14th day, except Ts, which was monitored daily until symptoms completely resolved within 14 days.
IH showed significant improvement over PL in VAS-P at day 7 (P = .005) and day 14 (P < .001), as well as in VAS-S at day 7 (P = .001) and day 14 (P < .001). OHIP-14 improvement post-treatment was notably higher in IH than PL (F=3.404, P < .05). Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed a significant difference in Ts (P = .015), with reduced hazard in the PL group (Hazard Ratio = 0.3024, 95% CI: 0.1087-0.8414). The most prescribed medicines in the IH group were Mercurius solubilis (16.6%) and Hypericum perfoliatum (13.3%), whereas in the PL group, the most indicated medicines were Mercurius solubilis (13.3%) and Staphysagria (13.3%).
The authors conclused that this study demonstrated a significant therapeutic effect of homeopathy over placebo in alleviating pain and swelling linked to odontogenic infections. Nevertheless, to firmly establish this finding, a large-scale replication trial employing a similar methodology is deemed necessary.
What are the possible explanations for this result? I can think of several:
- IH is effective. As there is no plausible reason to assume that IH is effective for odontogenic infections (or anything else), this seems unlikely.
- The finding is false positive due to methodological flaws such as the small sample size or deblinding of patients, etc.
- The finding is false positive due to an undetectable bias introduced by the wishful thinking of the authors who are affiliated to the Department of Repertory, Mahesh Bhattacharyya Homoeopathic Medical College & Hospital, Howrah, West Bengal, India.; the Department of Pathology & Microbiology, D. N. De Homoeopathic Medical College & Hospital, Kolkata, West Bengal; the Department of Dentistry, Mahesh Bhattacharyya Homoeopathic Medical College & Hospital, Howrah, West Bengal, India; the Ministry of Ayush (Government of India), New Delhi, India.
- Overt fraud, i.e. data manipulation.
As I have no access to the full paper, I cannot come closer to determining which of these explanations are the most likely. If you have access, please let me know what you think.
34 Responses to Homeopathy for odontogenic infections?
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From the sheer volume of emails I get, telling me lies about problems with my website, and telephone calls purporting to be from “Bank Security Department” or from Microsoft, it is easy to form certain impressions about the general veracity of Indian sources. A pity.
For the same reason, we could say that Science, Lancet, or Nature are not credible because there are many cybercriminals in the US and the UK who send emails asking for help (scams) or making threats with compromising videos in their possession. Don’t you realise that what you’re saying doesn’t make sense, David? Your autism is no excuse; you are aware that you like to be xenophobic when it suits you. Not all Indians are dirty, nor are all Indians ara scammer working in dubious call centers.
catnip, what’s this about autism? Who’s autistic? Not I! Not in the slightest!
Nor am I at all xenophobic or racist. The point I was making was that the sheer volume of scam calls and untruthful emails from cities in India, would tend to give that country a ‘bad name’ (to the detriment of all the law-abiding citizens of that country) – and law enforcement there does not seem able to put a stop to it.
I am not for a moment suggesting that everyone in India is dishonest. Nor did I say anything about being dirty – where did you get that from? Don’t put words in my mouth.
Do you have any suggestions, though, catnip, as to why the scam phone calls and untruthful emails all originate in India (apart from the odd “Nigerian Millions” scam)?
Dentist here.
An odontogenic infection is treated surgically by removing the source of the infection. Antibiotics are prescribed only if there is systemic involvement. If someone with systemic involvement is treated only with homeopathy, the patient is at serious risk of becoming extremely ill or even dying.
I suspect that these so-called odontogenic infections were either extremely mild or nothing of the kind.
Lenny…so, behind ALL of your handwaving and being a “defender of science,” we discover that you’re a dentist. THAT makes sense, Mr. almost-a-real-doctor.
And your “analysis” is so typical. If these cases were “mild,” then, this randomized double-blind and placebo-controlled trial, would have eliminated the possibility that the homeopathic patients only had a mild infection. Just sayin’.
In the meantime, I am still awaiting a real analysis of this study. Just add this positive trial to the 400 or so other clinical trials published in peer review journals, including trials published in the Lancet, BMJ, Pediatrics, European Journal of Pediactrics, Pediatrics Infectious Disease Journal, Cancer, The Oncologist, PlosOne, Chest, Rheumatology, and many many others. Just sayin’.
@Dana Ullman
You are neither a doctor, nor a dentist, nor a scientist. Yet you have the gall to berate those people as if you know better than all of them. Which you don’t.
… most of which are negative, outright crap or even fraudulent (Frass, anyone?). Given that we don’t have access to the full paper of the study under scrutiny here, this last one may fall in any one of the categories mentioned.
And oh, PubMed lists less than 300 RCT’s over the past 45 years, most of which came up negative or are inconclusive. The very few positive trials a) show only tiny effects, and b) could generally not be replicated.
This is not what you would expect from a viable system of medicine.
This IS what you would expect from something that doesn’t do anything at all, yet still has some deluded followers who will stop at nothing to try and prove that they’re right. Which of course they aren’t.
Rasker, you are not a physician nor scientist, you are an electrical engineer with no training in biomedical sciences (from what I can see). You are an electronics technician who became an electromedical technician through practice. Shall we continue with this or shall you stick to the arguments?
1. You must prove that most homeopathy trials are ‘negative’. I have not seen anyone who has done so. All the ‘official verdicts’ cited by Ernst do not show that figure; if anything, they dismiss positive trials as being of ‘low methodological quality’ in general (which is almost the same proportion as in conventional medicine) or “implaussible”. Ernst’s redefinition of inconclusive trials as ‘negative’ is also useless. I am surprised that an expert in methodology has no idea that the definition of inconclusive exists in statistics.
2. You must prove that the positive trials are all fraudulent and explain why the ‘sceptics’ would not have done the same in negative experiments (we have clear examples such as Hirst in 1994 wirh playing tricks to negate their findings, Ernst himself in his reanalyses with virtual data to try to refute Shang, Shang et al. themselves, and the second Australian report, which unfortunately left the fraudulent authors unpunished). You must explain why some studies on homeopathy with no evidence of fraud were retracted (e.g., Macías Cortés in PlosOne) while meta-analyses such as Shang et al (with evidence of data dredging and post hoc selection) have not been retracted.
3. Unless you engage in criminal behaviour, you cannot accuse author of committing fraud if you have not read the entire text or have not had the data at hand or proof of fraud.
4. You say that there are fewer than 300 trials in PubMed over 45 years and most are ‘negative’ or ‘inconclusive,’ but you do not provide the list. You are not taking into account that PubMed does not list all trials, especially those in Spanish, German (rarely), French, and Portuguese. Limiting yourself to PubMed is ridiculous. When you look beyond PubMed, you find a lot of extra material.
5. The OAWI itself has already rectified its position with regard to Frass. So you are defaming a renowned researcher and inventor who is indeed a physician and scientist.
Oh, look, our nymshifting troll is back.
Why do you keep posting under new made-up names all the time? What are you afraid of? That your reputation in the real world will be in the trash once it comes out that you still believe in fairy tales? Can’t be much of a reputation anyway, given the overt stupidity you demonstrate here already.
Lenny is a properly educated dentist. So HE is the primary expert here on the subject of odontogenic infections and how those should be addressed, NOT some dim-witted charlatan who claims that shaken water is a medicine.
No, I must prove nothing. YOU must prove that homeopathy actually does something apart from ripping people off. So far, NOT A SINGLE HOMEOPATHIC PREPARATION 12C+ HAS BEEN FOUND THAT SHOWS CLEAR, CONSISTENT AND INDEPENDENTLY REPEATABLE EFFECTS. So until the day that such a homeopathic preparation has indeed been found you had better shut up. I for one won’t hold my breath.
All this of course is to be expected, as homeopathy flies in the face of both common sense and several hundred years of very solid scientific work. It is, in other words, EXTREMELY implausible that it actually works – it is, after all, just the brain fart from a guy from the late 1700’s whose ideas were already debunked during his lifetime.
The extremely few positive outcomes can be chalked up to simple statistics, crappy science (homeopaths are generally not scientists – I myself got one of those ‘papers’ retracted) and outright fraud. Which is also supported by the fact that any positive effects are usually tiny, and get even smaller with increasing quality of the papers.
Has anyone taken any notice of these results, Dana? Have any been replicated independently? Have any had any effect on clinical practice?
Nope. And nope. And nope again.
They have, as ever, been recognised for the fanciful and ludicrous bumwash that they are and have been ignored.
Just sayin’, Dana.
“I am still awaiting a real analysis”
And I am still awaiting the name of the laboratory that can distinguish homeopathic water from other water, a feat which you said in this Blog only fools or liars doubted could be . Ninety-first time of asking.
Those laboratories do exist, David. Here is a short list:
Chronix Biomedical
Indian Institute of Technology
Hagenau Hospital
Kikom Bern University
Naples University (Chem Departament)
The million-dollar question will be whether you are able to refute the research that has been produced there.
You parroted Mr Ullman’s idiotic error.
Catnip,
Thank you for your list of laboratories.
Could you please provide links to some of the studies from these institutions where active ingredients in high-potency homeopathic preparations have been identified? In that way we coud see for ourselves.
I have looked up all the places you mention, catnip. The Indian Institutes of Technology is an umbrella body of some 23 technical colleges or institutions across India (see Mr Attkins’s comment).
I cannot find any evidence that any of the places you mention, have demonstrated ability to do what Mr Ullman says “only fools or liars” deny can be done.
We already know you’re a dentist, Lenny. After all, you admit it, after making a fool of yourself by leading others to believe you had basic knowledge of chemistry and physics (when you clearly don’t, as has been proven). It would be interesting if you gave us a reason to believe you’re a real scientist with publications in peer-reviewed journals, and I’m asking you this because you like to humiliate others. As Ernst says in his blog, back up your claims of being a scientist with references!
No-one in the UK can practice Dentistry without appropriate medical qualifications, and being on the Register. “Dentist” is a protected designation.
A dentist is a type of physician, David. You always respond with things that don’t make any sense. I’ll say it again, your autism is no excuse for what you do. You’re supposed to have a degree in chemistry, or so you said, right? You should base your arguments on what the authors say and the data, not on what you think is ‘impossible’.
Who supposes me to have a degree in chemistry, catnip? You? I do not have a degree in chemistry, or in any science. Nor do I have autism. I think you must be confusing me with someone else.
We’re surgeons, idiot. My degree is BDS. Bachelor of Dental Surgery.
Stick to shaking your magic water.
Back with the baseless ad homs again, Catnip. Because, as we know, that’s all you have. Just handwaving and insults.
If you had the evidence to shut us up, the irrefutable, unarguable, multiply and independently replicated evidence of the clinical efficacy for homeopathy in the treatment of any condition, you’d have used it.
But you don’t have any.
Because homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo, despite you fevered masturbatory fantasies to the contrary.
So, as ever, you just use insults. You, like Dana, are a pathetic, delusional and inconsequential idiot. Run along now, Catnip.
Oh and remind us of how many papers you’ve had published.
An emeritus professor who has published in leading medical journals and also in alternative medicine journals (which he himself dismisses when it suits him, because when he does not cite them to validate himself), went from having a disguised “open-minded” stance, then to being critical, then to saying he was a “trained homeopath,” then that he was a homeopath for six months, then that his wife was successfully treated by a homeopath, then to being both angel and demon (in the editorial of Homeopathy and in Skeptical Inquirer at the same time), then to being part of the agribusiness conglomerate, then to being part of Sense About Science….
And then, to do meta-analyses trying to play tricks to invalidate the trials or not include the Odds Ratios, or look for tricks with virtual data, or do single-author systematic reviews, or find the black swans (JADAD trials = 5) but removing them because “there are few” (while with Yoga it finds low-quality trials and considers them promising), and so on until it ends up no longer evaluating trials on their own merits but because “they are from homeopaths” to this:
“As I have no access to the full paper, I cannot come closer to determining which of these explanations are the most like”
catnip it is evident that you are a troll.
Hmmm…so, anyone who disagrees with you is a troll? I love these people who claim themselves to be “defenders of science.”
No, not at all, Mr Ullman. Many who may disagree with me about many things, are not trolls. I called “catnip” a troll because he (or she) is a troll.
While you are here Mr Ullman, could you take the time to name a laboratory that can distincuish homeopathicw ater from other water, which you said in this blog a few years ago “only fools or liars” doubted could be done? Ninety-second time of asking…..
— Dana Ullman on Thursday 08 July 2021 at 17:43
https://edzardernst.com/2021/07/dana-ullman-has-just-published-two-papers-in-real-science-journals/#comment-132380
See also:
https://edzardernst.com/2021/07/dana-ullman-has-just-published-two-papers-in-real-science-journals/#comment-132397
Thank you Mr Attkins!
I apologise for the tragic typographical infelicities in my previous reponse. I hope no-one was too traumatised by them….
Well, your deployment of the logical disjunction in place of Ullman’s logical conjunction dilutes the accusatory potency of the original message — especially due to the fact that many people incorrectly take “or” to mean an exclusive disjunction, instead of correctly taking it to mean an inclusive disjunction.[1]
E.g., if someone accuses Mr Ullman of being a liar or a fool, I shall be swift to highlight their error.
1. Affirming a disjunct, Wikipedia
“E.g., if someone accuses Mr Ullman of being a liar or a fool, I shall be swift to highlight their error.”
We may draw a conclusion about the former from Mr Ullman’s previous claim in this Blog to have identified such a laboratory “many times” when had not (and has not) done so once. We may draw a conclusion about the latter, from the totality of his postings here.
This is pertinent:
Fools or frauds?
https://edzardernst.com/2018/05/fools-or-frauds/
Well, indeed.
Reminds me of the pianist Liberace; when asked DIdn’t it bother him that he messed about with the classics, he is reported to have replied “Oh yes – I cry all the way to the bank!” And then years later “I don’t do that any more – I bought the bank!”
Liberace had genuine talent, of course, and was respected by some of the finest classical pianists of the day.
Thank you, Catnip! Brilliant history lesson…and it seems that the people at THIS website have an allergy to history. They don’t learn from it…and do their best to rewrite it…or just spin it.
In any case, thanx for confirming the twisted logic and outright hypocrisy of the pseudo-defenders of medical science.
I hope that you will contact me privately…it seems that we have much in common.
“…it seems that we have much in common.”
Indeed it seems so…..
@Dana Ullman
Here’s a lesson: in all of history, not a single homeopathic preparation 12C+ was ever found producing clear, consistent and independently repeatable effects.
I asked you to name just one such homeopathic preparation and you never did. Because there isn’t one.
Homeopathetic, in other words.
Me seems “catnip” is a sockpuppet of “sandbox”. Or JK. Or [please include nickname of another homeopathy disciple].
The same specific text pattern can be observed time and again in comments and trolling. A lot of hot air peppered with anecdotes that appear scholarly or scientific, but which reveal that the commenter has not understood the basics of natural science. And of course, personal attacks on Edzard and other commenters are a must when you have been caught making obvious false statements.