The AYUSH Ministry and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are working together on validating four Ayush formulations against Covid-19, Union minister Shripad Y Naik said on Twitter on Thursday. He also said that trials will start within one week.
“The @moayush & the @CSIR_IND are working together on validating four Ayush formulations against #COVID19Pandemic and the trials will start within one week. These formulations will be tried as an add-on therapy and standard care for COVID-19 patients. I am sure and quite hopeful that our traditional medicinal system will show the way to overcome this pandemic,” Naik said on Twitter.
While the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is one of the world’s largest publicly funded scientific and industrial research organizations, the Ministry of AYUSH, which stands for Ayurveda, yoga, Unani, Siddha and homeopathy, cultures with India’s traditional form of medicine.
“Last week, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan announced that CSIR and AYUSH will work together on four different formulations,” Mande said.
Mr. Kotecha said that AYUSH and CSIR collaboration has a larger perspective. “This is once in a lifetime opportunity. This type of study never happened in our country. These four candidates are – Ashwagandha, Yashtimadhu (Mulethi), Guduchi + Pippali (Giloy) and AYUSH-64, which was invented for the treatment of malaria and its repurposing is going on,” he said.
“So, we are doing two types of stimulus studies as profile access on the high-risk population for Ashwagandha. We have also planned a competitive study between Hydroxychloroquine and Ashwagandha,” he added.
CSIR Director-General Shekhar Mande and Ayurveda and AYUSH secretary Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha had said on Wednesday that the result will come within three months.
Earlier it was reported that the Interdisciplinary Ayush R&D Task Force has formulated and designed clinical research protocols for prophylactic studies and add-on interventions in Covid-19 positive cases thorough review and consultative process of experts of high repute from different organizations across the country for studying four different interventions viz. Ashwagandha, Yashtimadhu (Mulethi), Guduchi +Pippali (Giloy) and a poly herbal formulation.
However, doctors have yet not found any concrete solution in the traditional medicine system of Ayurveda or in any other allopathic drug across the world. Even though plasma therapy is being resorted to for helping COVID-19 patients recover from the deadly virus in India, the treatment has not been proven as totally effective.
