UNDERSTANDING OF PHARMACOVIGILANCE AND ADVERSE DRUG REACTION IN TERMS OF AYURVEDA

Abstract

Pharmacovigilance is the science which encompasses the activities concerning the detection, assessment, under-standing, and prevention of Adverse Drug Reaction. Drug safety is a very basic and fundamental concept in medical practice. ADRs play an important role in assessing patient safety in any system of medicine. Pharmacovigilance study is thus significant to understand treatment outcomes. In Ayurvedic system of medicine there is inadequate genuine clinical trial and their evidences supports safety and efficacy of Ayurvedic medicines, which leads to lack of reporting Adverse effects. Present literature review was conducted from various compendia of Ayurveda and electronic data base with search terms of ‘Vyapad’, ‘Viruddha’, ‘Ahita’, etc. The reported information was analysed for the possible correlation on concept of ADR and Pharmacovigilance of current science. Overall review demonstrated that drug interaction, administration of drug in wrong dose or dosage form, over dose, administration of unsuitable drugs, reprehensive drug administration with respect to disease, complication from five procedural therapies (Panchakarma) and reprehensible preparation of mineral drug are nearer to the modern causes of ADR. Thus, concept of drug safety and ADR is not new to the Ayurveda. The concept “Drug which is not appropriate to be used as medicine” (Abheshaja) of Ayurveda sounds similar as that of modern pharmacovigilance.