Evaluation of efficacy of barley water in pulmonary tuberculosis

Background: Tuberculosis is a chronic infectious disease caused by bacteria known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2006, approximately 14.4 million people were suffering from TB globally, despite the easy availability of highly effective drugs to everyone. At present it is a global epidemic being world’s foremost killer of youth and adults, taking nearly 3 million lives each year in spite of scientific knowledge of causative organism, pathophysiology, diagnostic methods and highly effective antimycobacterial drugs. In India, 40% of population is infected which is 1/5th of the global burden. Every year 1.8 million people develop TB in which 0.8 million are smear positive. This means that there are short coming somewhere in the preventive and curative measures. It invites us to think its solution in other way; this is the challenge for medical fraternity. Barley water was commonly used in Unani medicine for management of TB. Objectives: To fi nd out the effect of Barley water as nutritional and medicinal supplement in the patients of tuberculosis. Methodology: In this study Fifty (50) already diagnosed cases were randomly allocated to test and control groups in a ratio of 30:20 patients. In test group 200 ml Barley water was administered orally daily in addition to DOTS for six months and in control group only DOTS was given. The assessment of appetite and weight were noted at 0, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th months. The assessments of parameters were done before and after the treatment. Results: Signifi cant improvement was observed in both the parameters of disease viz. loss of appetite and weight. Statistically it was found to be signifi cant (p < 0.01).