Evidence that could resolve whether it really IS all in the mind

THERE were 2,700 prescriptions for homeopathic remedies issued by NHS GP practices between December 2016 and May 2017. Clearly, there are patients — and doctors — who believe there may be something to the therapy.

And while patients’ stories are far from proof that homeopathy works, it begs the question: is it simply a placebo effect or is it something more?

Proponents argue that key evidence showing a genuine benefit is often left out of major studies that claim to review all the available evidence.

According to Dr Peter Fisher, a rheumatologist and clinical director of research at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, there have been 43 summaries of homeopathic trials and 21 showed an effect greater than a placebo.

‘This is a proportion very similar to what studies of conventional treatments find,’ says Dr Fisher.

He is also critical of the way the trials now used as evidence that homeopathy doesn’t work were run.

One key study published in The Lancet in 2005 found ‘weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies’ and implied they were no more than placebos. However, Dr Fisher describes the research as ‘failing to meet elementary standards of quality and transparency’.

The study analysed eight out of more than 100 randomised controlled trials — the ‘gold standard’ for proving treatments are better than a placebo, where one group gets the real therapy and the other a ‘fake’.

‘But the rules as to what studies could be included were changed half-way through,’ claims Dr Fisher. ‘This excluded 93 per cent of available trials and skewed the results against homeopathy. When the study was re-analysed using the original rules, good evidence for homeopathy emerged.’

On the other side of the debate, Professor Edzard Ernst has said that the British Homeopathic Association has misrepresented studies that it claimed showed homeopathy differs from a placebo. While the two sides are poles apart on what the evidence shows, all agree the principle behind homeopathy — super dilution — is a problem, flying in the face of science.

Compared with standard drug treatments, once a homeopathic remedy has been diluted thousands of times, there should be nothing left but water. But what if it could be shown that something clearly physical is going on?

Dr Steven Cartwright, a research biochemist formerly of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University and now working at Diagnox, a commercial lab, is looking at precisely that. He trained as a homeopath after a single dose ‘cured’ the hayfever he’d had for years — ‘I was curious to find out more.’

Using a group of dyes that have some unusual properties, he believes he’s discovered a clue as to what is going on. The dyes change colour depending on the liquid they’re put into. In water, one might show up as red, but blue in alcohol.

Exactly why is not clear, but Dr Cartwright believes it could be because they respond to electrical and magnetic fields. When he mixed some regular shopbought homeopathic remedies with the dyes they produced different colours. ‘You couldn’t see them with the naked eye but they showed up when looked at through a standard bit of lab equipment, a spectrophotometer,’ he says.

He believes something in the remedy was affecting the dye. ‘I think it was probably picking up an electric or magnetic charge, possibly the result of the vigorous shaking that goes on during dilution,’ he says.

What’s more, the effect was stronger the more diluted the remedy, and different remedies produced different colours.

‘It’s too early to make any claims,’ says Dr Cartwright. ‘There is a group in Brazil working to replicate it.

‘We might have discovered a radical new medical mechanism. But let’s see.’

The NHS view remains as previously stated: that there is no robust evidence to support homeopathy.