In good news, the Drugs Controller General of India has made a new drug named 2-deoxy-D-glucose or 2-DG drug that can significantly reduce a covid patient’s stay in the hospital.
Cleared by the government for critical cases, it reduces the need for medical oxygen by stopping the virus to grow more in the infected cells.
Speaking about it, the Ministry of Defense, noted:
The drug comes in powder form in sachet, which is taken orally by dissolving it in water.
According to the Ministry, the patients who were given the said drug, started showing improvements by the third day and their need for medical oxygen reduced significantly.
In 2-DG arm, significantly higher proportion of patients improved symptomatically and became free from supplemental oxygen dependence (42 percent vs 31 percent) by Day-3 in comparison to SoC, indicating an early relief from Oxygen therapy/dependence.
The comparison here was made with patients who were not given the drug. 2-DG is also not known to have any worrisome side-effects.
In the ongoing second COVID-19 wave, a large number of patients are facing severe oxygen dependency and need hospitalisation. The drug is expected to save precious lives due to the mechanism of operation of the drug in infected cells. This also reduces the hospital stay of COVID-19 patients
The work on the drug began right after the pandemic broke out in the country in 2020, and got the green flag almost a year later.