A comprehensive review of research on homeopathy has concluded there is no reliable evidence that it is effective in treating health conditions.
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The findings, released by the National Health and Medical Research Council on Wednesday, are based on an assessment of more than 1800 scientific papers.
Homeopathy is a type of complementary medicine based on the idea that substances that produce symptoms in a healthy person can be used to treat similar symptoms in a sick person.
The Australian Homeopathic Association says homeopathy can be used to treat a wide range of conditions including colds, food poisoning, hangovers, travel sickness, skin conditions, hormone imbalances, mood swings, headaches, behavioural problems, digestive problems and arthritis.
But the NHMRC review found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works any better than a placebo, or that it is effective as another treatment.
While some studies reported that homeopathy was effective, the NHMRC said these were too small or too poorly conducted to confidently draw conclusions.
NHMRC chief executive Warwick Anderson said people who were considering using homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner and, in the meantime, keep up any prescribed treatments.
"People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness," Professor Anderson said.
The finding comes as the federal government prepares to extend funding to private colleges teaching unproven therapies such as homeopathy, and as it considers whether it should continue to pay the private health insurance rebate on policies which pay for such alternative therapies.
According to the Private Health Insurance Administration Council, benefits paid by insurers for natural therapies grew by 345 per cent in the decade to 2012-13, significantly above the growth rate for any other category of general treatment.
Asked whether insurers should continue to pay for homeopathy, Professor Anderson said: "As somebody who pays taxes, and has private health insurance, we always want to make the public and the private dollar go as far as it can and surely we should increasingly do that on the basis of evidence… as we build the evidence, we can't just keep adding things, we also have to take off the public purse I think those things for which there's no evidence of effectiveness. Otherwise it's wasting dollars."
The Australian Homeopathic Association wrote to Professor Anderson on Wednesday accusing the council of being biased against homeopathy.
The association said homoeopathy had a two hundred-year history and was widely practised in Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent.
