World Journal of
Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences

AYURVEDIC MANAGEMENT OF GENITAL HERPES – A CASE STUDY

Dr. Harshitha C. M.* and Dr. Anupama V.

ABSTRACT

In Ayurveda and communicable diseases have been separately described as Aupasargika Roga.Interactions among agent, host and environment is responsible for emergence of infectious diseases. An infection is manifested only if agent is able to overcome the host immunity under favorable environment. Sushruta opines that without involvement of factors like Ritu (suitable season or time), Beeja (seed), Kshetra (field), and Ambu (water) neither a plant nor a fetus can germinate and grow. Same principle can be applied to development of infectious diseases. Among these four factors, suitability of Kshetra (human body) is especially important in the context of infectious diseases along with Beeja (infective agent), Ritu (opportune time allowing the optimal growth of the pathogen) and Ambu (nutritional factors favoring the pathogens). Ayurveda advocates various preventive measures like avoiding prasanga (mutual contact) and gatrasansparsha (touching) to break the chain of transmission of infective agents and rasayana (rejuvenative therapy) and panchakarma (purification procedures) to promote the kshetra.Although communicable diseases have been controlled to a large extent with the help of modern preventive measures like vaccination a continued re- emergence of newer infective diseases has made it necessary to re-look the measures of prevention. Here the Herpes genitalis is caused by the herpes simplex virus type 1 or type 2 and can manifest as primary or recurrent infection. It is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections and due to associated physical and psychological morbidity it constitutes a considerable, often underestimated medical problem. In addition to providing the reader with basic knowledge of the pathogen and clinical presentation of herpes genitalis, this review article discusses important aspects of the laboratory diagnostics, antiviral therapy and prophylaxis. The article is aimed at all health-care workers managing patients with herpes genitalis and attempts to improve the often suboptimal counselling, targeted use of laboratory diagnostics, treatment and preventive measures provided to patientsThere is an urgent need to complement them with the traditional knowledge, such as use of the ancient preventive measures and health-promotive measures like rasayana. This paper is intended to describe various methods of infection prevention described in Ayurveda texts and discusses their relevance in current scenario.

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