Standards of reporting Ayurvedic clinical trials — Is there a need?

Reported lack of efficacy of Ayurvedic treatments in clinical trials is often not due to inefficacy of the treatment itself, but arises from inadequacies of trial design. This paper argues that trials of Ayurvedic interventions should exclusively use its multi-component, individualized and inherently holistic approach, and that general guidelines for rigorously reporting such clinical trials should be developed. Holistic Ayurvedic clinical trials, rigorously conducted and with high standards of reporting should translate into good clinical science, and may be expected to generate higher credibility for clinical studies of the Ayurvedic knowledge system.