Six months after the World Health Organisation received the first reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in China, the...
Six months after the World Health Organisation received the first reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in China, the Covid-19 pandemic has claimed over 500,000 lives worldwide and over 17,000 in India. The hard reality, the WHO said, is that the pandemic is nowhere close to being over. With a vaccine still at least months away, the focus is on a few treatments that have shown encouraging results in clinical trials.
In an interview with Scroll.in, Dr SP Kalantri, Professor of Medicine and Medical Superintendent at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram, Maharashtra, unpacked the mammoth effort underway globally. He spoke about drugs that look promising, those that were merely hype, and why the Patanjali drug trial is a textbook example of how a study should not be conducted.
What are repurposed drugs? Are all of the ongoing clinical trials being done on already approved drugs that are being repurposed to treat Covid-19?
Yes, all the drugs in the ongoing or completed clinical trials are repurposed drugs: for example, hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, remdesivir, dexamethasone, Lopinavir-ritonavir, and convalescent plasma.
Repurposed drugs, also called off-label agents, are ones that have been found to be effective for other diseases and are likely to be effective for Covid-19.
For most...
