Homeopathy and Fever Management: A Scoping Review

Background: Fever is frequently managed with antipyretic medication or other treatment methods, including homeopathy. Little is known about the nature of homeopathic interventions used for fever or their effectiveness in treating this symptom. This study aimed to identify studies assessing the effectiveness of homeopathy in managing fever, from which to characterize the homeopathic prescribing methods (individualized homeopathy (IH)/non-individualised homeopathy (non-IH)), specific homeopathic medicines, and populations studied.

Methods: The scoping review followed the Arksey & O’Malley framework (2005). Searches were conducted in OVID Medline, PubMed, Google Scholar and through hand-searching of references. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), non-randomized controlled trials and observational studies were included if they were peer-reviewed and published in English between January 1975 and December 2022.

Results: We identified 11 studies, of which three reported on IH and eight on non-IH. Four studies were placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials, two were usual care-controlled randomized clinical trials, and five were observational studies. The studies were conducted with infants, children and adults, and the sample size ranged from 92 to 1126 participants. The effectiveness of homeopathy in reducing fever compared with placebo or usual care was demonstrated in five RCTs and in three observational studies. One RCT and one observational study were inconclusive, showing no difference between homeopathy and placebo or usual care, respectively. One observational study concluded that paracetamol was more effective than homeopathy in reducing fever.

Conclusions: The majority of studies included in this scoping review report that homeopathy can be an effective treatment option for reducing fever. More high-quality studies are needed to assess the effectiveness of homeopathy in fever management with fever as a primary outcome across multiple populations. Studies on IH are specifically recommended for future research due to the overall positive direction of the effects observed with this treatment, but the low number of existing studies.

Keywords: Fever, homeopathy, antipyretic, body temperature

Publication History

Article published online:
30 January 2024