Alternative medicines and "cures" for Hepatitis B

General Discussion
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Hello Thomas, lately I have encountered one hepatitis medicine advertisement on TikTok by a person from India. I just went through google and tried getting more information about it. And it was reflected that medicine can cure hepatitis, and we will need take for durations of 6 month. It is known as ‘ liver sanjeevani’. Therefore, I am bit suspicious about it. I would be glad if you could share whatever you know. If it can cure hepatitis then why is it not announced to world that hepatitis cure is found. Thank you.

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Dear @Star505,

Thanks for your question, I hope you don’t mind that I made it a separate topic because I think it’s a really important subject that should be discussed in detail.

I think you were right to be sceptical for all the reasons you’ve described. To put it bluntly, there are no proven cures for Hepatitis B yet. There is no scientific evidence that I can find showing that liver sanjeevani can cure hepatitis B.

Thomas

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Hello Experts,

In India, there are multiple Ayurvedic doctors/companies, who claim to cure Hepatitis b. They have many patient testimonials (hundreds of them) as well.

To list few companies and details on their official websites,

  1. Planet Ayurveda - (on their website, medicines are mentioned to be GMP certificate, FDA registered, USDA organic etc…) One testimonial shown to viral load from 50mn to TND levels. They supply worldwide.
  2. Kamalahar - Many testimonials of liver disease cure including Hepatitis B and C. They claim to cure within 6 months to a year. They are in for 30+ years and have helped 1mn patients in 30 countries. Testimonials also include patients with cirrhosis and ascites reversal in 6 months.
  3. HM foundation- They claim to be FDA approved, USFSM registered, Patented product, GMP certified. I am not sure whether they are referring some Indian certifications or something else. They even claim to restore anti HBs over a period of 12-15 months to give lifelong protection from disease.

There are many other firms too…

There are many other individual doctors with testimonials of patients showing viral load reduction to TND levels.

All of them say that the medicines have no side effects and one can be off medication once viral load becomes TND or Hbsag becomes negative.

What can we interpret from these ?

Regards,

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Dear @rjktgj,

To get straight to the point, there are no scientific studies credibly showing ayurvedic medicine can lead to meaningfully beneficial states for hepatitis B. Instead there are several scientific descriptions of ayurvedic medicines causing liver injury, liver failure and even death. Here are the first 5 that came up for me (there are many more):

These seem like significant side-effects to me, and obviously the people that are injured or die are unlikely to be asked for their testimonials. By chance, some people will naturally (without these agents) clear the infection, so these particular testimonials or examples can’t really be trusted without a proper trial.

I (and the rest of the HBV scientific community) would be the first ones supporting any agent that does lead to HBV cure without any side-effects, even if it were based in ayurvedic medicine. There are previous examples of this: Artemisinin had been used in Chinese traditional medicine for (probably) 1000s of years. When this was scientifically shown to have effects against malaria, it was eventually incorporated into medical response as a pure (and relatively safe) substance.

Hope this helps clarify things,
Thomas

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