Research
The popularity of Ayurveda is mainly due to its therapeutic efficiency against most chronic diseases where modern medicines are ineffective. Much evidence supports Ayurveda's performance better than Western medicine, but it needs to be validated by advanced scientific procedures. Clinical trials in Ayurveda are needed for the revalidation of facts enumerated in Ayurvedic classics leading to the explanation of fundamental principles and finding better treatment modalities for existing diseases and newer diseases and also standardise the treatment procedures scientifically and to establish dose, duration, indication and side-effect profile of any given drug.
Panchakarma Hospital & Research Institute has a clinical trial cell to research chronic diseases and conditions like Arthritis, Diabetes, Rheumatic Complaints, and Skin Diseases. Clinical research in Ayurveda is much more complex than modern medicine, because, Ayurveda considers disease occurring due to multifactor and follows multitargeted management, a research design where a single formulation is attempted in different patterns of presentations with different phenotypes can never give satisfactory outputs and hence overall results of most of the research planned without this approach ends up in the mild response or even negative findings. Thus, suggesting a single drug or a group of medicines for a particular disease is not the aim of Ayurveda research. Instead of finding out the efficacy of the drugs, our focus is on exploring the mechanism of effectiveness. Developing treatment protocols for different presentations of the same diseases in individuals with a holistic approach is the main concern of our Ayurvedic research.
