Background:
Dengue is an important tropical disease with an estimated number of 50 to 100 million cases per year. Currently, there are no specific treatments or a vaccine available for the control of dengue disease, but homeopathic practitioners suggest that homeopathic formulations are useful to prevent and treat symptoms of dengue.
Objective:
To present a review of literature that seeks to identify and summarize all studies that had investigated the utility of the homeopathic medicines in the treatment and prevention of dengue.
Methods:
We conducted a systematic search of published scientific articles in the following databases: PubMed, LILACS, Scopus, ISI Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, PsycInfo and SciELO, employing English, Portuguese and Spanish language. The search terms used were "dengue" and "homeopathy".
Results:
It was found only one randomized controlled double-blind clinical trial and two trials of community. However, these studies do not provided reliable evidences of therapeutic or prophylactic efficacy of homeopathic formulations.
Conclusion:
To date, due to the lack of randomized, double-blind controlled and well conducted studies in sufficient numbers, there are no clear evidences of the usefulness of homeopathic medicines for the treatment and prevention of dengue. Thus, the usual measures and well known employed in the primary prevention of disease should not be replaced by homeopathic formulations.
Literature review; dengue; homeopathy; prevention & control; therapeutics
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