AAHP Research on Safety of Homeopathy

By Mark Land, MS, RAC-US, AAHP President

Each year one issue of the AAHP newsletter focuses on research. The March 2023 issue delved into basic and clinical research, as well as the research agenda of a major homeopathic company.

This year, our research issue is chocked full of the progress being made in various areas for homeopathy and features a newly published study on the status of homeopathy being taught in U.S. pharmacy schools. View our new video series, “In the Pursuit of Science,” which interviews leading researchers around the world on their work in homeopathy. There’s a summary of work being done by the Homeopathic Research Institute in London and HOHM Research here in the U.S. And Sonoran University launched a free digital library of roughly 62,000 original homeopathic literature as PDF documents to encourage accuracy and excellence in our field.

There is one more exciting development in research, for which this column is devoted: AAHP’s proposed study on the safety of homeopathic drug products is nearly ready to launch. The year-long study will examine adverse events (AEs) and their characteristics in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), as well as quantitatively assess reporting risk of serious AEs associated with homeopathic drugs.

Findings of this project will provide an up-to-date and fundamental safety profile of marketed homeopathic drugs, which will further support a well-informed legislative and regulatory environment for homeopathic products in the United States. It will also establish a baseline of data that can be built upon in the future.

AAHP hopes to gain the following information:

• Frequencies and types of AEs (serious, non-serious, and specific AEs) with a homeopathic product as a suspected drug in the FAERS database over a 10-year period from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 31, 2023.
• Characteristics of these AE reports: in patient demographics, location, type of reporter, and type of homeopathic drugs.
• Top 10–15 frequently reported types of AEs with a homeopathic product as a suspected drug.
• Results from disproportionality analysis via reporting odds ratios (ROR) to compare risk signals in serious and specific AEs between homeopathic products and all other drugs.
• Types and frequencies of other concomitant drug use along with homeopathic products on AE reports.
• Potential drug-drug interactions (DDIs) signal detection in serious and specific AEs with homeopathic products and concomitant drugs.
• A completed written manuscript ready for submission to peer-reviewed medical/pharmacy journals.

To coordinate this effort, AAHP has been working for a while with the American Foundation of Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE). Among other activities, AFPE funds research conducted at pharmacy schools on a wide range of topics in pharmaceutical and social and administrative sciences — such as the aforementioned newly published study on the status homeopathy being taught in U.S. pharmacy schools. AAHP members may remember AFPE President Ellen Woods presented at last year’s Semiannual Membership Meeting back on Oct. 12, 2023.

Both Ellen and lead researcher Jingjing Qian, PhD, associate professor, Harrison College of Pharmacy, Auburn University, Alabama, will provide details of the study on the safety of homeopathic drugs exclusively to our members during the upcoming AAHP Semiannual Membership Meeting. Register now for this Sept. 27, 2024 event.