1Professor & HOD, PhD scholar, Department of Community Medicine, Dr. D.Y. Patil Homeopathic Medical College And Research Centre, Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
2*Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine, Dr. D.Y. Patil Homoeopathic Medical College And Research Centre, Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
3Principal, Dr. D.Y. Patil Homeopathic Medical College And Research Centre, Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India.
The quality of life is significantly reduced by a number of chronic issues associated with diabetes mellitus. Although there is currently no unified data, complementary systems like homeopathy are being examined more closely for their potential role in managing issues associated with diabetes.
Objective: To systematically review and meta-analyze medical success of homeopathic medicines in management of diabetes-related complications.
Methods: Important web resources including Google Scholar, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and PubMed were used in a comprehensive search. Predetermined inclusion and exclusion rules were used to filter English-language studies assessing homeopathic treatments for problems associated with diabetes. The qualifying requirements were satisfied by six investigations (controlled clinical studies and randomized controlled trials). Information on the study's features, interventions, results, and impact measurements was retrieved. We used a random-effects model to conduct the meta-analysis and the I² statistic to evaluate heterogeneity.
Results: Across six clinical trials involving about 557 patients (with analyzable samples varying from 27 to 247 per research), homeopathic therapies shown statistically significant advantages compared to placebo or conventional care. One double-blind randomized controlled trial (Mehra et al., 2021; n=68 assessed) indicated a substantial decrease in NTSS-6 scores for diabetic neuropathy (p < 0.014), accompanied by favorable trends in nerve conduction measures. Another RCT (Banerjee et al., 2024; n=60) shown a reduced development to diabetes and significant elevations in HbA1c and metabolic profiles within the homeopathy group compared to the placebo. A substantial multicentric observational research (Nayak et al., 2013; n=247 analyzed) identified considerable clinical enhancement in diabetic distal symmetric polyneuropathy, but objective measurements showed little alterations. A retrospective cohort research (To et al., 2017b; n=27 vs. 40 controls) showed substantial decreases in fasting plasma glucose and HbA1c over a duration of ≥12 months in the homeopathic group. Observational comparison studies (Bhasker Sharma, 2019) have shown that homeopathy along with conventional treatment is a better way to control blood sugar and cholesterol levels than conventional therapy alone. Also, a randomized double-blind study (Mourão et al., 2019; n=80) showed that when homeopathy was used along with periodontal care, clinical attachment level (CAL) improvements and gingival developments were better after 12 months. On the whole, these results show that homeopathic medicines have long-lasting and statistically significant positive effects on health and biochemistry. But the effects were not always the same and the objective results were not always the same from one study to the next.
Conclusion: The study shows that homeopathic drugs may be helpful in managing problems related to diabetes, especially when it comes to relieving symptoms and improving quality of life. However, these results need to be confirmed by more large-scale, well-designed randomized controlled trials because the studies that were included were not all the same and had problems with their methods.
Keywords: Diabetes mellitus; Diabetes-related complications; Homeopathy; Homeopathic medicines; Systematic review; Meta-analysis; Complementary medicine; Clinical effectiveness
How to cite this article: Ingle D, Bhanage P, Sharma D. Clinical Effectiveness of Homeopathic Medicines in the Management of Diabetes-Related Complications: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Int J Drug Deliv Technol. 2026;16(10s): 458-476; DOI: 10.25258/ijddt.16.10s.59
Source of support: Nil.
Conflict of interest: None