Indore: In a first in city and probably in state, a 70-year-old woman was given the 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) drug developed by Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), a lab of Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in a private hospital in city on Sunday.
Moreover, the duty doctors and family members of the woman claimed that the patient got instant relief and her oxygen level shot up to normal in just one hour after she was administered the drug.
The 70-year-old Santosh Goyal, resident of Anand Nagar was admitted to a private hospital about one-and-a-half months ago. Earlier, she had tested Covid positive but she recovered from the disease and was discharged.
YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DRUG
*DRDO Project Director and Scientist of 2-DG, Dr Sudhir Chandana explains how the drug was developed. He stated that when the pandemic hit India in April 2020, they discovered that 2-DG halts the spread of COVID-19 inside the body cells. "After the findings, we asked the DCGI for permission to conduct clinical trials. In May 2020, we got permission for the clinical trials. By the end of October 2020 we had completed the second phase of trials, and the results were very good. Using standard care, 2 DG will be more beneficial for the Covid-19 patients," Chandana had told the media.
*A total of 110 patients were part of the Phase-II clinical trials of DRDO's 2-DG drug. The results showed that in terms of improvement of vital signs of COVID-19 symptomatic patients there was a difference of 2.5 days compared to Standard of Care (SoC). Approval for Phase - III clinical trials were granted in November 2020. These were conducted in 27 COVID-19 hospitals spread across several states. "Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence," an official DRDO statement had explained earlier.
*How 2-DG controls Covid-19 and reduces dependence on oxygen?
"The 2 DG drug, like glucose, spreads through the body, reaches the virus-infected cells and prevents virus growth by stopping viral synthesis and destroys the protein's energy production. The drug also works on virus infection spread into lungs which help us to decrease patients dependability on oxygen," he said.
“She was again admitted to the hospital as a post-Covid patient after her oxygen level had decreased. She has a case history of breast cancer, arthritis and heart ailments. Due to her multiple health issues, we sent her documents to DRDO as a case study and asked the officials to provide us the sachet of 2-DG,” Shirish Goyal, son of Santosh Goyal told media.
He added accepting their request, they got four sachets of 2-DG from DRDO Delhi and it were handed over to the family by Member of Parliament Shankar Lalwani.
“One sachet of the drug was given to her on Sunday evening and my mother reacted well to the drug as her oxygen level increased from 65 to 94 and she is recovering. My mother also thanked the Prime Minister for providing the drug,” Goyal said.
Meanwhile, the hospital's ICU’s Dr Avdhesh Gupta told the media that the oxygen level of the patient had shot up but again it came down. As per DRDO, 8-10 sachets of the drug needs to be given to the patient for effective results.
The oxygen requirement of the patient decreased from 14 liters to 8 liters initially, as the duty doctor claimed in a video.
