June 21st 2010

The 5th International Congress on Complementary Research (ICCMR) recently held in Tromsø, Norway attracted over 400 CAM researchers. There were over a dozen presentations covering a wide range of different types of homeopathy research – basic, clinical and methodological research into the effects of both homeopathic remedies and homeopathic practitioners.

Sarah Brien gave five presentations reporting the results of her extensive mixed methods clinical research into the effects of homeopathic remedies and homeopaths in the field of rheumatoid arthritis. Stephan Baumgartner gave two presentations: ‘Positioning effects in a homeopathic basic research system: evidence for cross-contamination?’ and ‘Quantitative meta-analyses of homeopathic interventions for specified medical conditions – a systematic assessment’. Other presentations included Rainer Lüdtke’s ‘Placebo effects in homeopathic and conventional drugs’, Jim Rogers’ ‘Systematic review of homeopathic pathogenetic trials’, Tim Jaeger’s ‘Comparative study of two bioassays with weakened duckweed and yeast treated with homeopathic preparations’, Anne Majumder’s ‘Exploring homeopathic practitioners perspectives on underlying theory and practice: Views on treating chronic diseases’ and Clare Relton’s methodological research into pragmatic clinical trial design, the ‘Cohort multiple RCT design’.

Abstracts of all 130 presentations will shortly be available for download from the ICCMR website  http://www.iccmr2010.com/