ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Honey has been extensively studied in the treatment of wound but efficacy in clinical practice is not fully established. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of topical application honey in observational studies as well as in controlled clinical trials in the treatment of wound healing. A systematic literature search was carried out from 1966 to 31 July 2008 in Pubmed, Medline, Embase, Cochrane database using the appropriate search key words. We found 5 observational studies with 160 patients while 963 cases in 10 controlled clinical trials where 511 patients were treated with honey. Efficacy was found highly efficacious in observational studies but in controlled clinical trial showed its modest efficacy. Most of the patients reported with complete healing of 99 % within 2-9 weeks in observational and 56 % in controlled trials and healing was observed within 4-12 weeks time in controlled clinical trials however some of the recent double blind trial showed no superior benefit of honey compare to control. So base on above trials it can be concluded that topical application of honey is useful for the treatment for wound healing but to fully established its efficacy, larger prospective double blind study is required in near future. Key word