**Abstract**

Homoeopathy is an alternative medical system proposed by Samuel Hahnemann in the eighteenth century. It uses highly diluted and agitated substances that derived from plants, minerals or animals, which have shown to be effective in human medicine, agronomy, veterinary, and as a novelty, in marine aquaculture. Aquacultural homoeopathy has developed rapidly in recent years, partially motivated by the misuse of powerful drugs (hormones,

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

antibiotics, disinfectants) that when solving a problem generate undesirable side effects. In the last 10 years, scientific articles have been published on its application in freshwater fish native to Brazil, obtaining beneficial effects on growth, survival, hepatosomatic index, development of muscle fibres and lipid content in muscle. At Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste (CIBNOR, Mexico: www.cibnor.mx), we have studied the effects of homoeopathy to improve the culture of economically important marine species of molluscs, fish and shrimp. In this chapter, we show a selection of different research with preliminary or advanced results, related to the use of homoeopathy and its impact on zootechnic, biochemical, genomic and transcriptomic parameters in marine molluscs, fish and crustaceans. The results obtained suggest that homoeopathy is an eco-friendly alternative applicable in aquaculture industry to improve various productive and health aspects.

of its high dilution, it is possible to detect nanoparticles of the "ponderable active principle" (MT) in the dynamisations, even in high centesimal dilutions despite the fact that according to Avogadro's theory, they should not have a single molecule of MT [8]. Therefore, re-naming

Aquacultural Homoeopathy: A Focus on Marine Species http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78030 69

Homoeopathy has the peculiarity of stimulating the self-recovery of dynamic homeostasis when it has been lost due to exogenous and/or endogenous factors. Therefore, it does not focus on "the disease" but on the manifestations and intrinsic defence mechanisms of the "patient." It offers "signals" of systemic action to the treated individual to promote its selfregulation to recover homeostasis, and as it uses ultra-diluted minimal doses, it does not leave residues in the organism or in the environment. As a counterpart, the other medicine known as "allopathy" derives from a galenic concept based on the "principle of opposites" and the application of massive doses of various chemotherapeutic agents officially classified as antimicrobial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, anti-histaminic, anti-fever and other "anti" drugs. Homoeopathic medicines can be administered to any living being, including terrestrial and aquatic plants, wild animals in captivity and breeding, as well as freshwater and marine species of commercial interest [7]. It has been widely used in human, animal and plant medicine because it induces specific responses and increases immunity, favouring resistance to pathogens under stressing situations, promoting a better post-infection recovery

In Mexico, homoeopathy is recognised as a therapy of alternative medicine, and its practice was authorised by presidential decree in July 31, 1895; today its study and practice is officially recognised in the general health law (2015), and only health professionals can prescribe homoeopathic medicines, which must have an official code. This is the way homoeopathic medicines are differentiated from products like herbs for infusion and herbal remedies. In countries such as Brazil, there are homoeopathic medicines exclusively for veterinary use, for marine and freshwater fishes, registered with the Ministry of Agriculture. Important and promising results have been reported in freshwater organisms, mainly Nile Tilapia *Oreochromis niloticus* and Pacu *Piaractus mesopotamicus* [11–13]. Taking into account these antecedents, this chapter compiles not only the experimental results obtained in marine organisms, such as molluscs, fish and crustaceans when treated with commercial homoeopathic medicines for human use and approved by Federal Health Law and Health Ministry of México but also other ones that have been designed and developed at Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del

For the purposes of this chapter, commercial drugs for human use have been utilised in the form of liquid hydro-alcoholic dynamisations (Similia® Laboratories, Mexico), injectable aqueous dynamisation (Rubiopharma®, Mexico) or sugar impregnated with homoeopathic complexes (Arenales Homoeopathy®, Brazil). They were considered "stock dynamisations," from which the respective "work dynamisations" were obtained through a serial process of dilution-succussion decimal or centesimal. Other non-commercial medicines were designed and developed at CIBNOR, from bacterial products (nosodes). This chapter deals with unitary or complex laboratory treatments used and registered with the Mexican Ministry of Health, such as Similia® and Rubiopharma® and a Cuban drug of Labiofam®, which will be described as follows: *Passiflora incarnata, Valeriana officinalis, Ignatia* amara and *Zincum valerianicum* of

homoeopathy as "Adaptative Network Nanomedicine" has been recently proposed [9].

and improving internal dynamic homeostasis [5, 6, 10].

Noroeste (CIBNOR) in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

**Keywords:** homeopathic medicine, marine molluscs, crustaceans and fish, growth, survival and biomass production, physiology and reproduction, genomic, metagenomic and transcriptomic response
