April 25,2022

The trials designed by the researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have shown the ex-cellent efficacy of Indomethacin, a non-steroidal anti-inflammato-ry drug as an antiviral agent in the treatment of mild and mod-erate COVID-19 patients. 

The findings of this study have recently been published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature Scientific Re-ports. The study conducted at Pa-nimalar Medical College and Research Institute was led by Dr Rajan Ravichandran, an Ad-junct Faculty at IIT Madras and Director of Nephrology at MIOT hospitals. 

The study was conceptual-ized and coordinated by Profes-sor R Krishna Kumar, Institute professor, IIT Madras. 

An established drug widely used

“Indomethacin, with more than 20 lakh prescriptions per year in the US alone, is an es-tablished drug widely used since the 1960s to treat various types of inflammation-related” IIT Ma-dras said in a statement. IIT Madras further said in a statement that the Indian re-searchers are the first to show the efficacy of indomethacin through a randomized clinical trial though the scientific basis has been researched by Italian and US scientists. The entire study was fund-ed by Kris Gopalakrishnan, an alumnus of IIT Madras and Chairman of Axilor Ventures. 

“Knowing that one of the deadly effects of the COVID in-fection is inflammation and the cytokine storm, we decided to study the non-steroidal anti-in-flammatory drug, Indomethacin. The scientific evidence strong-ly shows the anti-viral action against Coronavirus. Indometh-acin is a safe and well-under-stood drug. I have been using it in my profession for the past 30 years,” said Dr Rajan Ravi-chandran. Highlighting the Research findings, Professor R Krishna Kumar, Institute professor, IIT Madras, said, “Out of a total of 210 admitted patients 107 were randomly allocated to a control group, treated with paracetamol and standard care of treatment. 

103 patients were adminis-tered indomethacin along with standard care of treatment. The patients were monitored every day for symptoms such as cough, cold, fever and muscle pain along with oxygen saturation.” Desaturated with oxygen saturation levels “None of the 103 patients who received indomethacin de-veloped oxygen desaturation. On the other hand, 20 of the 109 patients from the control group were desaturated with oxygen saturation levels below 93 per cent. Indomethacin group pa-tients recovered from all symp-toms in three to four days. It took double the time for the control group. Liver and kidney function tests showed no adverse reac-tion,” he added 

R Krishna Kumar further said that the fourteenth-day fol-low-up showed that nearly half of the control group patients had several discomforts while a few indomethacin patients complained only of tiredness. 

“Indomethacin works with all variants. We had done two trials, one in the first wave and the other in the second wave. The results were the same. I sincerely hope ICMR takes note of this study and includes indo-methacin in COVID treatment protocol,” Dr Rajan Ravichan-dran added. SOURCE: ANI