Acupuncture News
News Archive
8-13-02
Many Germans Use Alternative Meds for Allergies
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - More than 1 in 4 German adults with allergies uses alternative medicine to treat their condition, new study findings suggest.
"Alternative medicine is used widely for allergies by the general population and is associated with considerable costs," write lead study author Dr. Torsten Schäfer of Medical University Lübeck in Germany and his colleagues.
Schäfer and his team investigated the prevalence of alternative medicine use for allergies in a study of 351 German adults with hay fever, asthma, eczema and food allergies.
They found that slightly more than one quarter (26.5%) of the study group reported using some type of alternative medicine to treat their allergies, they report in the August issue of the journal Allergy.
The most popular treatments included homeopathy, in which extremely dilute solutions of a substance are given in an effort to stimulate the body's immune system, and acupuncture.
Most (78%) of the individuals who used the alternative treatments did so because they assumed there would be few side effects, but 72% said they wanted to try everything and two-thirds of the group said they were unsatisfied with conventional therapies, the researchers report.
More than half (54%) of the alternative medicine users were pleased with the results of their treatment, saying it was "rather good" for their allergies, and 29% said it was "very good," the report indicates.
In 4 out of 10 cases, general practitioners, dermatologists or other medical doctors promoted these alternative treatments, and 61% of the time medical doctors performed the treatments.
Costs ranged from 15 euros to 205 euros for a single treatment and from 15 euros to 1,278 euros for an entire treatment, the report indicates. But 55% of the patients said they would be willing to pay an average 153 euros more than they actually paid in order to get the same results. About half (52%) of the patients were partially or fully reimbursed by their insurance company.
On average, alternative medicine users were younger than non-users and were twice as likely as non-users to have had more than eight years of schooling.
SOURCE: Allergy 2002;57:694-700.
