Coimbatore-based Arya Vaidya Pharmacy (AVP) will be one among the three sites in the country where a collaborative research project to evaluate the efficacy of Ayurvedic medicines on rheumatoid arthritis will be carried out.
Collaborative research project
P.R. Krishna Kumar, Chairman of AVP Research Foundation, made the announcement at a press conference here on Tuesday. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between AVP Research Foundation and the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), a body under Ministry of AYUSH, on February 20 in Coimbatore, he said.
According to the MoU, the collaborative research project is titled “A double blind double dummy prospective randomised controlled study to evaluate the efficacy of classical Ayurveda management versus Methotrexate in Rheumatoid Arthritis (AMRA) Study.”
AVP will collaborate with the Regional Ayurveda Research Institute for Metabolic Disorders (RARIMD), Bengaluru, and Central Ayurveda Research Institute for Cancer (CARIC), Mumbai, institutions under CCRAS.
According to Mr. Kumar, this project will be based on the pilot study conducted by AVP, which was published in 2011 in the U.S-based Journal of Clinical Rheumatology. The study, conducted by the University of Washington, Seattle, with funding from the U.S.’s National Institutes of Health, compared the efficacy of Ayurvedic treatment with allopathic treatment.
For the project in Coimbatore, AVP’s K.G. Raveendran and Somit Kumar will be the treating physician and co-investigator respectively. Director of Clinical Research at Arthritis Association of South California (AASC) Daniel Furst designed the study and would be mentoring during its course, Mr. Kumar said.
Sujith Eranezhath, assistant director and scientist at AVP Research Foundation, said that the standardisation of medicine preparation for the study was under way.
