Background: In the current century, a significant challenge is addressing the escalating global burden of Non-Communicable Diseases. Integrating Alternative and Complementary Medicine into the ...existing healthcare system is a major initiative to combat this issue. Despite increased access to free healthcare facilities, heightened disease awareness, and widespread exposure through electronic and print media, the popularity of unprescribed alternative medicine persists in India. Objectives: To assess the Prevalence, Patterns, and Predictors of Complementary and Alternative Medicine use among non-communicable disease patients in the urban field practice area of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru. Methodology: A cross-sectional study conducted among non-communicable disease patients residing in the urban field practice area of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bengaluru. A sample size of 250 was determined based on a pilot study and systematic random sampling used for participant recruitment. Data collection utilized a pre-tested structured questionnaire. Data analysed using SPSS 21.0 Results: Among the 250 participants, 55 (22%) used both Allopathic and Alternative medicines, only 11 (20%) exclusively relying on Alternative systems. Ayurveda was the most utilized alternative medicine 15(27.2%), followed by Sidda 8(14.5%). Statistically significant associations were observed between the usage of Alternative medicine and patients’ religion and education. Conclusion: A relatively small percentage of adults exclusively used Alternative systems of medicine in this study. Ayurveda emerged as the predominant alternative medicine, followed by Sidda. The prevalence of alternative medicine was higher among Hindus and participants with education below the primary level. These findings shed light on the complex dynamics of healthcare.
Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory, multisystem disease that affects up to 3.2% of the United States population. This guideline addresses important clinical questions that arise in psoriasis ...management and care and provides recommendations based on the available evidence. The treatment of psoriasis with topical agents and with alternative medicine will be reviewed, emphasizing treatment recommendations and the role of dermatologists in monitoring and educating patients regarding benefits as well as risks that may be associated. This guideline will also address the severity assessment methods of psoriasis in adults.
Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) are used in more than 80% of the world's population and are becoming an increasing component of the US health care system, with more than 70% of the ...population using CAM at least once and annual spending reaching as much as $34 billion. Since the inception of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, there has been an enormous increase in the number of basic science and therapy-based clinical trials exploring CAM. The subspecialty of allergy and immunology represents a particularly fertile area with a large number of CAM therapies that have been shown to affect the immune system. Recent work has uncovered potential biochemical mechanisms involved in the immunomodulatory pathway of many supplemental vitamins (A, D, and E) that appear to affect the differentiation of CD4+ cell TH 1 and TH 2 subsets. Other research has shown that herbs such as resveratrol, quercetin, and magnolol may affect transcription factors such as nuclear factor-κB and the signal transducer and activator of transcription/Janus kinase pathways with resultant changes in cytokines and inflammatory mediators. Clinically, there have been hundreds of trials looking at the effect of CAM on asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic dermatitis. This article reviews the history of CAM and its use among patients, paying special attention to new research focusing on herbals, phytochemicals, and vitamins and their potential interaction with the immune system.
It is well established that people who use complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) are, on the whole, more vaccine hesitant. One possible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that trusting ...CAM results in people becoming more vaccine hesitant. An alternative possibility is that vaccine hesitancy and use of CAM are both downstream consequences of a third factor: distrust in conventional treatments. We conducted analyses designed to disentangle these two possibilities.
We measured vaccine hesitancy and CAM use in a representative sample of Spanish residents (N = 5200). We also measured their trust in three CAM interventions (acupuncture, reiki, homeopathy) and two conventional medical interventions (chemotherapy and antidepressants).
Vaccine hesitancy was strongly associated with (dis)trust in conventional medicine, and this relationship was particularly strong among CAM users. In contrast, trust in CAM was a relatively weak predictor of vaccine hesitancy, and the relationship was equally weak regardless of whether or not participants themselves had a history of using CAM.
The implication for practitioners and policy makers is that CAM is not necessarily a major obstacle to people's willingness to vaccinate, and that the more proximal obstacle is people's mistrust of conventional treatments.
•Alternative medicine (CAM) users are more vaccine hesitant than non-users.•Vaccine hesitancy is strongly associated with (dis)trust of conventional medicine.•Vaccine hesitancy is only weakly associated with trust in CAM, even among CAM users.
With tens of thousands of plant species on earth, we are endowed with an enormous wealth of medicinal remedies from Mother Nature. Natural products and their derivatives represent more than 50% of ...all the drugs in modern therapeutics. Because of the low success rate and huge capital investment need, the research and development of conventional drugs are very costly and difficult. Over the past few decades, researchers have focused on drug discovery from herbal medicines or botanical sources, an important group of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy. With a long history of herbal usage for the clinical management of a variety of diseases in indigenous cultures, the success rate of developing a new drug from herbal medicinal preparations should, in theory, be higher than that from chemical synthesis. While the endeavor for drug discovery from herbal medicines is “experience driven,” the search for a therapeutically useful synthetic drug, like “looking for a needle in a haystack,” is a daunting task. In this paper, we first illustrated various approaches of drug discovery from herbal medicines. Typical examples of successful drug discovery from botanical sources were given. In addition, problems in drug discovery from herbal medicines were described and possible solutions were proposed. The prospect of drug discovery from herbal medicines in the postgenomic era was made with the provision of future directions in this area of drug development.
BACKGROUND: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most prevalent genetic hemoglobinopathy with an estimated 300,000 babies born with the disease globally every year. Due to the chronic nature of the ...disease, there is a pressing need for safe, effective, and affordable therapeutic agents for SCD. In many settings, use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been reported in the management of the disease. However, there is limited documentation about the use of CAM among patients with SCD in Uganda. Thus, this study was conducted with the aim to determine the prevalence of CAM use and the most commonly used CAM among patients with SCD at Mulago Sickle Cell Clinic (MSCC). METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted for a period of 3 months using an interviewer-administered questionnaire to collect data from 293 participants who were recruited into the study using simple random sampling method at Mulago National Referral Hospital Sickle Cell Clinic, Uganda. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software to express univariate data as median, mean, mode, percentage, and frequency tables and graphs. RESULTS: CAM use was reported among 76.7% of the participants with the majority using more than on type of CAM. Biological products were the most commonly used form of CAM followed by spiritual healing; 74.6% of the CAM users used biological products, 25.2% used spiritual healing and prayer, while 0.6% used energy therapies. The most commonly used CAM include avocado leaves (50.9%), herbal concoctions (28.3%), beetroot (19.8%), prayer (18.8%), garlic (13.7%), and anointed water (12.6%). CONCLUSION: This study found a high prevalence of CAM use among patients with SCD.
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