Inhibition of (–)-Propranolol Hydrochloride by Its Enantiomer in White Mice

Abstract

Background: This study is based on the hypothesis, that the toxic or physiological effects of an optical isomer may be counteracted or reversed by the administration of a potentized preparation of one of its stereoisomers. In the present study the enantiomer was used. Methods: 154 ICR conventional mice were used. 77 mice were administered (R)-(+)-propranolol HCl homeopathic potency prior to and during the experiment, and the other 77 were administered indistinguishable placebo. On the day of the experiment the mice were sedated with intraperitoneal Rometar. Once sedated they were injected intraperitoneally with the LD50 dose of (S)-(–)-propranolol HCl. Results: The end point for statistical analysis was the difference in survival between the placebo and treatment mice. The odds ratio for survival of treatment mice relative to placebo mice was 1.64. The hypothesis of equal survival proportions gave a chi-square of 2.0916 (1 degree of freedom), which has a p-value of 0.1481. The analysis was then adjusted for mouse weight and intraperitoneal (–)-propranolol dosage using a logistic regression (LR) model. The LR treatment odds ratio was 2.017 and the LR treatment chi-square was 2.8864 (1 degree of freedom), which has a p-value of 0.0893. Consequently we accept the null hypothesis of no treatment effect on survival. The odds ratio estimates show that the treatment mice are 2.02 times more likely to survive than placebo mice, but this was not statistically significant with p = 0.089. Nine percent more treatment mice survived than placebo mice. The investigators accustomed to handling rodents noted that mouse recovery seemed substantially faster in the treatment mice than in the placebo mice.

A review of use of enantiomers in homeopathy

“…In order to test the null hypothesis that potentized optical isomers were no different from placebo in terms of their ability to modulate toxicity of their enantiomers, experiments were done in 3 countries: Bulgaria, randomized, controlled experimental studies and controlled laboratory studies [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][19][20][21]. A feature of the experiments discussed in this paper was that they were performed with minimal or no pre-experimentation to determine optimal potencies, methods of manufacture, or starting concentrations of medicinal substance and that diverse species and enantiomers worked within the hypothesis; further, in spite of the diversity of compounds, species and methodologies used, all experiments were prospective tests of the same null hypothesis.…”

“…Experiments were done using ICR mice at the Institute of Zoology, in Sofia Bulgaria [3][4][5][6]21]. Except for the first experiment, which was an unblinded randomized placebo-controlled pilot study, mice in the remaining experiments were randomized blind into control and treatment arms.…”

“…Work using enantiomers in homeopathy has been published mainly in patents. Five experiments have also been published in 4 journal articles [3][4][5][6] with the balance available on line at WIPO [2,7] and the United States Patent Office web site [8]. The experiments were performed in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Scotland.…”

“…Modulation of toxicity of such molecules provides the possibility for therapeutics, since these molecules target multiple points in biochemical pathways, although it must be admitted that use of potentized substances in this way may be anathema to the principles of homeopathy which involves a number of steps in case analysis and a particular philosophy. It was hypothesized that toxicity of a chemical agent may be counteracted or modulated by a homeopathic or potentized preparation of the mirror image of the chemical agent [2,3,7,8] (Australian patent no. AU2003208170, Australian patent applications 2010203124 and 2009201723, Indian patent application no.…”

“…05105229.7, New Zealand patent numbers 535654 and 588787). It was speculated that such use of enantiomers for modulating optical isomer toxicity may mimic the simillimum principle of homeopathy better than, say, the principle of isopathy [3].…”