Preliminary Research:

Objective Of The Study

To determine the value of a Pitta pacifying diet along with aloe vera gel as the initial and sole treatment of the interstitial cystitis symptom complex.

Materials And Methods

Between January 2003 and June 2003, 71 patients were retrospectively identified for evaluation. Twenty-six patients were excluded from the study because of no return appointment, phone disconnected, suspected noncompliance (15), or admitted inability to do the treatment plan outlined (11).

Patient Population

Of these 45 patients, there were 35 females (30 adults and 5 children with age range between 3 and 79 years) and 10 males (9 adults and 1 child with age range between 4 and 64 years).

Evaluation

The symptom complex was consistent with the diagnosis of interstitial cystitis and consisted of dysuria, urgency, frequency, urge incontinence, suprapubic pain, pain with bladder filling, pain with intercourse, pain with ejaculation, and testicular pain. Since there is no screening tool that has been universally agreed upon, the irritative score of the International Prostate Symptom Score was used. This showed an average score for females of 16/35 and for the males 18/35. Lower tract workup was only done if there was failure to respond or the patient was noncompliant and returned.

Evaluation Scale

The assessment of improvement was a simple question: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being what your symptoms were like before you went on the diet and 10 being no symptoms at all, what number would you rank your present symptom complex? Patients were asked in follow-up visits at various intervals of time.

Follow Up

Using the evaluation scale, the response was evaluated between 2 weeks to 32 weeks with the response depicted in Table 3. In general, the response was diet engendered rather than associated with the aloe alone.

As seen in the below table, most patients who responded to the dietary change would respond within 2 to 6 weeks. This was so consistent that if no or little response occurred with believable compliance, further workup was mandated. The exceptions to this were those patients with HAS/GERD who seemed to have more imbalance with which to deal.

Results

Therapeutic Response:

Subjective response	0-4	5-7	8-10	11/45 (25%) of these patients reported complete resolution of symptoms. 39/45 (87%) were 50% or more improved. 26/45 (58%) were 50% or more improved within first 6weeks of diet/aloe.
Patients	4	21	20
	8%	47%	44%*

Time To Response:

2-6 weeks	6 - 8 weeks	8 - 15 weeks	16 weeks +
26/45	2/45	9/45	8/45
58%	4%	20%	18%

An interesting observation completely compatible with the Ayurvedic energy discipline was that 44% of the patients in the study experienced hyperacidity syndrome and/or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

These findings are promising and more studies are planned.

Hopefully others will join in using the diet to substantiate the findings reported here.