31/01/2025
New research from Germany - just published...
"Homeopathic and conventional treatments for acute upper respiratory tract infections (aURTI): Real-World cohort study on recurrence and antibiotic prescriptions."
This explorative cohort study used real-world electronic healthcare data from the Disease Analyzer database (IQVIA). Included were patients of all ages from Germany with an index diagnosis of aURTI between 2010 and 2018, who had prescriptions for either homeopathic, conventional cough & cold, nasal, or throat medicines, or nonopioid analgesics on the day of diagnosis or within six days afterwards. aURTI recurrence was assessed by multivariable logistic regression, the number of antibiotic prescriptions by multivariable negative binomial regression.
Results: From 3,628,295 patients with aURTI diagnosis initially identified in the database in the relevant time interval, a total of 610,118 patients, fulfilling the in- and not violating the exclusion criteria, were retained for analysis.
The findings?
"The study demonstrated that follow-up recurrence and antibiotic prescriptions in patients with uncomplicated aURTI are at least comparable between patients treated with homeopathic and conventional medicines in real-world practice. Despite some methodological limitations inherent to the used database, the results of this study indicate that homeopathic medicines present a valuable therapeutic option for managing aURTI."
Source: Banik, N. et al., Homeopathic and conventional treatments for acute upper respiratory tract infections (aURTI): Real-World cohort study on recurrence and antibiotic prescriptions. Complement Med Res. January 2025