Effect of Kalyanaka Avaleha Choorna along with ghrita (ghee) in Language Impairment of Children with Autism aged 3 - 6 years

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication and restricted or repetitive patterns of interests, behaviours, or activities. In Ayurveda, Autism may be correlated to the condition “Unmada”. Considering the language impairment in Autism, where Prana and Udana vayu dushti plays the major role in the samprapthi, ‘Kalyanaka Avaleha Choorna’ mentioned in the ‘Swarabhanga adhikara’ of Bhaishajya Ratnavali’ was selected as the trial drug. The present study, which is an interventional pre and post-test was aimed at evaluating the effect of “Kalyanaka Avaleha Choorna” along with ghrita in language impairment of children with Autism aged 3-6 years, twice daily, after food, for a period of 60 days. 13 subjects satisfying the inclusion criteria were enrolled for the study and were assessed before and after the intervention and also after 1 month of follow-up period using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) and the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Scale (REELS-Extended version) for the language age evaluation. The receptive and expressive language age were measured in ordinal scale and were statistically analysed using Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. The study results showed statistically significant outcomes (p <0.01) which proved that the intervention “Kalyanaka Avaleha Choorna” along with ghrita was effective in improving the language impairments of children with Autism with remarkable outcomes in both receptive and expressive language