By: AswathyP
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country’s apex medical research body, is reviewing the benefits of drugs ivermectin and doxycycline as potential therapy for Covid-19. The combination of these two drugs has been hailed by doctors in Bangladesh for yielding “astounding results”.
“We are closely studying the drug ivermectin and its possible efficacy against Covid19. It needs to be studied more closely,” Nivedita Gupta, senior scientist at ICMR told.
Ivermectin is a US Food and Drug Administration-approved anti-parasite drug used to treat some parasitic worms, while doxycycline is an antibiotic.
On 19 May, a team of doctors from Bangladesh claimed that their research on the combination of these two drugs “yielded astounding results” in curing patients with acute symptoms of Covid-19.
“Out of 60 COVID-19 patients, all recovered as the combination of the two drugs were applied”, Professor Dr Md Tarek Alam, the head of medicine department at the Bangladesh Medical College Hospital (BMCH) told news agency.
Meanwhile, according to Gupta, ICMR has reviewed the drug multiple times.
“In in-vitro studies it has shown effectiveness but there are no studies on human beings,” she said.
“We are continuously studying the evolution of the use of this drug in the treatment protocol of Covid19 patients. However, we need solid evidence or a published study, backed by statistically significant data on a bigger sample size to conclude anything,” she added.
