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.
DCGI has granted permission for emergency use of therapeutic application of drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) as adjunct therapy in moderate to severe COVID-19 patients. Being a generic molecule & analogue of glucose, it can be easily produced & made available in plenty: DRDO pic.twitter.com/2TJA4S1cAV
— ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2021
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.
Brazilian scientists established the mode of action of 2DG last year [not yet disclosed by DRDO].
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) May 8, 2021
SARSCoV2 LOVES high glucose. It increases its replication, in turn inducing cytokine storm.
2DG inhibits glucose flux, totally BLOCKS viral replication.https://t.co/ZtpIRMeUMU pic.twitter.com/hb4XmY2HYG
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.
From testing of DRDO and Dr Reddy Lab's 2-DG (2-deoxy-D-glucose) on coronavirus in cell culture at CCMB to successfully clearing the phase 3 trials, it will now be used on moderate to severe COVID-19 patients. DCGI approval has come.https://t.co/91be7W2aKU
— CCMB (@ccmb_csir) May 8, 2021
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
#WATCH: Dr Anant Narayan Bhatt & Dr Sudhir Chandna, Institute of Nuclear Medicine & Allied Sciences(INMAS-DRDO) scientists speak about drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG). DCGI approved emergency use of its therapeutic application as adjunct therapy in moderate to severe COVID patients pic.twitter.com/pySgG2moQC
— ANI (@ANI) May 8, 2021
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.