Theories and Models on the Mode of Action of Homeopathic Remedies – A Scoping Review

Background: As of today, no systematic review on published theoretical approaches to understand the mode of action of homeopathic remedies has been presented. References to possible theoretical models therefore remain speculative and arbitrary. The need to accelerate theory building for scientific and political reasons is widely recognized.

Methods: Following scientific standards we searched Medline, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, PhilPapers, the Gemeinsamer Verbundkatalog (GVK), swisscovery, CAMBase, several webOPACs (University Witten/Herdecke, IGM Bosch Stiftung, HBH, EBH) and personal libraries of the authors for original studies. All identified references were screened in duplicate and eligibility was determined according to preset criteria. Included references will undergo systematic data extraction and quality assessment. The results are planned to be published in two parts—the first containing a quantitative overview, the second a qualitative evaluation of the findings. We expect to identify theories and models on the mode of action of homeopathic remedies from different disciplines of natural science and arts humanities.

Results: Database searches resulted in several thousand unique references from which less than 2,000 were found eligible for title and abstract screening. A few hundred eventually were considered relevant for thorough full text analysis which is currently ongoing.

Conclusions: The results of this ongoing systematic literature review, which will be published in the coming years, will provide a thorough overview of theories and models on the mode of action of homeopathic preparations discussed in the scientific literature over the past 200 years and will serve as guidance for future theory building and development.

Keywords: Scoping review, theories, mode of action

Publication History

Article published online:
30 January 2024