Abstract

Abstract

Aamvata is a disease characterized by pain and inflammation in joints,which is called as a disease with inflammatory type of arthritis The patients suffer with vruschikadanshawata vedana ie severe unbearable cutting type of pain. Aamvata can be correlated to rheumatoid arthritis according to the signs and symptoms. Ayurveda offers drugless healing art in the form of jaloukavacharan also known as leech therapy which is known for the anti-inflammatory and analgesic, anesthetic actions of leech salivary gland secretions. Hence, a protocol was designed for the doctoral research on ‘Study of inflammatory markers in patients of Rheumatoid Arthritis treated by leech therapy”, for the assessment of subjective parameters of pain, swelling, redness, tenderness, loss of function of joints assessed by standard criterian, and objective parameters like CRP and ESR before and after jaloukavacharan for 10 sittings on alternate days. Observations were taken on day 0 and day 21..Statistical tests were applied which revealed significant results of  anti-inflammatory effect of leech therapy on CRP(mean 5,sd 2.11)at p value ,0.0001, ESR(mean  5.25, sd 2.98,). Jaloukavacharan (Leech therapy) was found to be having highly significant effect on pain score (mean43.65,sd16.45),and subsequent decrease in swelling on knee joint((mean3.83,sd0.97) and ankle(mean3.85,sd1.90)followed by significant increase in walking effect (mean11.71.sd20.06).which was statistically significant and improvement in other subjective parameters of assessment like redness, tenderness and rise in local temperature with  highly significant p value by Mcnemars chi square test.and co-relatable clinical improvement. These outcomes are encouraging enough for an RCT to be undertaken on the given area of research on a large scale which were the implications of this study.