ABSTRACT Various disease pathologies, such as atisara , pravahika , and grahani mentioned in Ayurveda literature, are frequently correlated with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and other gastrointestinal infections. The emerging evidences from different pre-clinical and clinical researches have suggested that gut microbes have a considerable role in maintenance of health and pathology of many diseases. Dysregulation of gut microbes also causes IBD through different mechanisms. Probiotics and prebiotics are therefore now used along with standard care treatment for IBD and diarrhea. Basti treatment is considered the best treatment, which is efficient to combat various disease pathologies due to its prabhava (special effect). Piccha basti is a special form of niruha basti , which is mainly indicated in disease related to lower gastrointestinal tract. In the present time, piccha basti is widely used to treat ulcerative colitis, a type of IBD. The present review aims to postulate the possible role of piccha basti to modulate the gut microbes, which is primarily based on the indications of piccha basti available in classical ayurveda texts and natural attributes of its constituents. To support the proposed theory of modulation of gut microbes, experimental and clinical researches related to probiotic and prebiotic effects of major components of piccha basti are included. Classical Ayurveda literature related to piccha basti and published researches available from online scientific databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and Science Direct are analyzed for this review. This review suggests that different combinations of piccha basti have been indicated for various acute conditions linked to the lower gastrointestinal tract. The major constituents of piccha basti combinations have shown antibacterial, probiotic and prebiotic properties in different scientific researches. It is possible that piccha basti , due to its unique combination, may modulate gut microbes, which can be validated through dedicated scientific studies.
Jindal et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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