An Indian ayurvedic drug is being tried on coronavirus patients in Mysore

• An ayurvedic drug called ZingiVir-H has been approved for conducting clinical trials on coronavirus patients in India by the Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI).
  
• The sample size of the study is 112 patients with 15 Covid-19 positive patients already enrolled.
  
• Hareendran Nair, the founder of the Pankajaksthuri Herbal Research Foundation in Kerala where the drug was developed, believes the results of trials will be available by the end of May.
  

An ayurvedic drug in India called ZingiVir-H has gotten the rubber stamp to conduct clinical trials on adults who have tested positive for coronavirus in India.

Currently, it’s only being tested at the Mysore Medical College and Research Institute (MMCRI) with a sample size of 112 patients with 15 people already enrolled — but it is open to recruitment.

According to Hareendran Nair, the founder of the Pankajaksthuri Herbal Research Foundation in Kerala where the drug was developed, other medical colleges in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Delhi have also been approached. This is the first known ayurvedic approach to cure Covid-19.

Testing ZingiVir-H as a drug for coronavirus
The Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI) has given the nod for a randomised controlled single-blind trial to find out if ZingiVir-H is safe and effective as a way to boost immunity in Covid-19 patients. That means while some patients in the trial will receive the drugs, others will receive a placebo.


According to Nair, ZingiVir-H has seven ingredients and he has been using the drug for the past 15 years to cure respiratory infections like viral fevers and acute viral bronchitis.

For coronavirus, a 500 mg tablet will be given to patients every 3 hours between 6:00 am to 9:00 pm for at least 10 days, but no more than 15 days to determine the outcome.

The clinical trials will measure a coronavirus patients’ improvement as per a 7-point ordinal scale to determine the odds ratio — the odds for improvement. On the day that a patient enters the trial will be the baseline, followed by recording time points on Day 7 and Day 15.

“We are expecting the results by the end of May. I am not sure about the result. If the results are positive, then it would be the success of Ayurveda, and if not, then it will be my failure,” Nair told ANI.

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