ABSTRACT
Since a very long time, a significant number of patients have been seeking treatment at Complementary and Alternative Medicine health facilities, but the disease burden at these facilities has never been assessed and documented. Present cross-sectional study was carried out at Ayurvedic tertiary care hospital to document and to assess the rationale of disease reporting at Ayurvedic institutions of the northern state of India from January 2011 to October 2011. Almost half of the patients' morbidities were not classified at all into any of the disease categories. The common reported morbidities at study hospital were: Respiratory [10.5%], neuromuscular [9.5%], digestive [9.2%] and circulatory [9.1%] disorders. As the majority of diseases were unclassified, so mainstreaming of the effective disease surveillance would be required to understand the morbidity pattern and successful treatment practices at health facilities
ABSTRACT
Hilteet [Asafoetida], an oleo-gum-resin, reported to be anti-convulsant and useful in various types of convulsions, was evaluated for anti-convulsant activity at various doses, in experimental animal model. A potent seizure-inducing model Metrazol test was followed to study the seizure-inhibiting activity of the test drug. The well-known anti-epileptic drug phenobarbitone was used as the standard drug for comparison. LD[50] and autopsy were also carried out to determine the margin of safety and gross changes in vital organs. The test drug showed significant dose dependent anti-convulsant activity without sedative effect as observed in phenobarbitone [Standard] group. The therapeutic index was computed and found to be very large indicating the safety margin of the test drug. Except visceral congestion, no significant histopathological changes were seen in autopsy