Arya Vaidya Pharmacy, Coimbatore has been recognised for the outcome of a clinical study on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) proving the benefits of herbal medicine over modern drugs. The study compared safety and efficacy of standard allopathic treatment and multi-modal ayurvedic treatment for rheumatoid arthritis in 45 patients.

The Indo US collaborative study conducted by AVP and the University of California, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA has received the Integrative Medicine Research Excellence Award from the European Society of Integrative Medicine for its findings.

The three-year long study was conducted at the 100 bed AVP, a 70 year-old leading ayurvedic institution. It adopted a protocol, meeting the requirements of American College of Rheumatology. This is one of the few studies conducted on Ayurveda and funded by NIH. Dr Daniel Furst, leading rheumatologist from the  University of California, Los Angeles was the lead investigator.

Patients were assigned to three arms that received allopathic treatment, ayurvedic treatment or a combination of both. The study revealed that ayurvedic treatment was approximately equivalent to methotrexate with fewer side effects. The patients showed clinically significant improvement on the Disease Activity Scores.

The paper resulting from this study has been published in Annals of Rheumatic Diseases and Journal of Clinical Rheumatology, which was recognised by this award to be of high quality research and contribution to Integrative Medicine Research.

The research team from AVP is led by Dr P R Krishna Kumar. It was Dr Furst who, received the award consisting of a cash and a citation at Florence, Italy by the European Society of Integrative Medicine.

“We view the successful completion of the study and the award from European Society of Integrative Medicine as a major effort. In mid-2011 European Union Directorate had issued a caution note about the adverse effects of alternative medicines from India. We can now confront such negative views on the science of Ayurveda with a never before documented evidence backed by international verification. The achievement is important for Indian system of medicine. We have made a good beginning bagging the honours from Europe,” Dr Ram Manohar, director, AVP Research Foundation told Pharmabiz.

Moreover, a well known Professor of Complementary Medicine, Dr Edzard Enrst, University of Exter, UK has also mentioned that the protocols of AVP study should be adopted as a blueprint for further research on complementary and alternative medicine, while writing a commentary on the paper in another publication that deals with focus on such research, he added.

Plans are underway to carry out more research and also bring out databases of Ayurveda to promote integrative medicine for which AVP is also looking at collaborators and partners.

“While there is a general perception that rheumatoid arthritis is not curable or treatable, Ayurveda offers excellent and different modalities. “We have been administering the therapy for  years successfully. Ample data is generated data on such ayurvedic treatment and medicines usage in a systematic way in this study,” said Dr KG Raveendran, medical director, Arya Vaidya Pharmacy.

AVP Research, which was a Trust earlier has now been reorganised as AVP Research Foundation and was recently approved by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research as an independent Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (SIRO).