New Delhi: Ever since India has witnessed the first COVID-19 case, the country has conducted 122 registered trials of modern, traditional and other forms of medicines.
“Since the beginning of the year, the deadly coronavirus pandemic brought the entire world to an unprecedented halt. In tandem with the global scenario, researchers in India are actively engaged in the conduct of clinical research to counter the pandemic,” an official in the in Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.
Research has been conducted through the clinical trials registered in the Clinical Trials Registry - India (CTRI). These trials were categorized into modern medicine (42), traditional medicine (67) and miscellaneous (13).
Of the 42 modern medicine trials, 28 were on repurposed drugs, used singly (24) or in combination (4). Of these 28 trials, 23 were to evaluate their therapeutic efficacy in different severities of the disease. There were nine registered trials on cell- and plasma-based therapies, two phytopharmaceutical trials and three vaccine trials.
The traditional medicine trials category majorly comprised Ayurveda (45), followed by homoeopathy (14) and others (8) from Yoga, Siddha and Unani. Among the traditional medicine category, 31 trials were prophylactic and 36 were therapeutic, mostly conducted on asymptomatic or mild-to-moderate COVID-19 patients.
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“In the absence of any vaccine or definitive therapeutic strategy, medical scientists are working tirelessly to not only save lives but also search for effective treatment modalities against the deadly virus. Drug development is a costly and time-consuming process and is not feasible in the context of the immediate global challenge. Therefore, drug repurposing strategies are being considered to develop safe and effective treatment regimens against the disease,” said the official.
It may be mentioned here that CTRI, set up under the aegis of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), is managed by the ICMR-National Institute of Medical Statistics. The CTRI is a free online registry that prospectively registers clinical trials being conducted in India and also in countries which do not have a primary registry of their own.
“With the emergence of the pandemic in India, there has been a steady increase in the registration of clinical trials on COVID-19 in the CTRI,” the official said.
Antivirals and antimalarial drugs like Favipiravir, Chloroquine, Hydroxychloroquine were put under trial. Immunomodulators like Imatinib, Itolizumab, Tocilizumab were put under trials. Traditional medicines like Ayurveda, Chawanprash, Ashwagandha were put under observation.
“The deadly virulence of the SARS-CoV-2 and the enforcement of widespread physical restrictions, medical researchers in India have risen to the dual challenge of caring for the sick and testing potential therapeutic options,” the official said.
The CTRI database is likely to encourage researchers to critically review the entire process, identify gaps particularly methodological and design aspects of research and further decide on the acceptability of the results.
“We hope that the data compiled CTRI in would help researchers to not only understand the clinical research scenario but also encourage healthy debate, train researchers to avoid obvious errors, steer clear of repetitive research and indirectly promote the quality of research in the country,” the official added.
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