CCMB study validates biological energy classification in Ayurveda

A genome-wide study by the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, a premier research organisation of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, in collaboration with other national research institutes has indicated certain correlation between Ayurvedic prakriti classifications with genomic diversity. 

A research team at the CCMB under the leadership of Dr Thangaraj has taken up the mega programme. Well-trained Ayurvedic physicians screened about 3,400 people and the same sets of people were also screened by software called AyuSoft developed by C-DAC, Bangalore.

Ayurvedic physicians believe that there are three `doshas' or biological energies / humors found in the human body.

Ancient Indians believed that everything that we see is made up of five elements - space, air, fire, water and earth. 

`Vata' is related to elements of space and air while `pittha' is related to elements of fire and water and `kapha' is related to elements of water and earth.

Each individual would have different levels of these three `doshas', hence the diversity. However, each person can be classified, belonging to one or the other type, if one of the `doshas' predominates.

People whose `Prakriti' was in concurrence between the assessment by the Ayurvedic physician and by AyuSoft were recruited for the study. Their blood samples were collected by respective participating labs. Isolation of DNA and genomic studies were carried out at CCMB using Affymetrix 6.0 SNP chip. This chip brings out single nucleotide difference in the genome among the tested samples. When the data is plotted, interestingly they fell into three groups, establishing the molecular basis for ancient classification.

Whether such phenotypic classification has any molecular basis has been a matter of debate for some time.  A few groups attempted to answer this question and found some correlation when they looked at one or two specific genes.  However, the association of genomic variations with `prakriti' classification was lacking.

This is the first genome-wide study to establish such correlation between Ayurvedic `prakriti' classifications with genomic diversity.  Analysis of these single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) revealed that about 52 genes might be responsible for specifying the individual's `doshas' or `prakritis.' 

Dr Thangaraj and his group has taken this study further and attempted to see if the samples collected randomly, without any information on their `prakriti', would also fall into three groups after the analysis based on the 52 SNPs, which appear to be important.

CCMB director Dr Mohan Rao said that this study would help to identify the `prakriti' of a person based on her / his genome. ''This is a major breakthrough linking our ancient wisdom with modern science''. He also said that this work will inspire many more such studies. These studies should eventually lead to establishing Ayurveda on sound footing along with modern medicine.

These studies were recently published in an open access journal, Science Reports, published by the Nature group.