Mumbai: Amid all the clinical trials and efforts to develop a possible treatment for the of SARS-CoV-2 virus, the city-based doctors have come up with a new therapy for the Covid-19 affected patients. Thymosin Alpha 1, a drug molecule named Imunocin Alpha 1, has been able to modulate the immune system and has helped a lot of patients across India. However, there are no such proven specific therapies available other than supportive ones.
Interestingly critical care specialists across India are highly recommending the use of Thymoci Alpha 1, a drug molecule in treating moderate to severe Covid-19 patients. The treating physician decides the dose of Imunocin Alpha 1 depending on the severity of the patient's COVID-19 symptoms. The treatment duration is 7 days and the drug has been well-tolerated without any adverse effects.
It has been also observed that patients with comorbid conditions are highly susceptible to COVID-19 infection. Moreover, Immunogen Alpha 1 has shown benefit in the treatment of COVID-19 patients with comorbid conditions like diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease and also in elderly patients.
Dr Om Shrivastava, infectious disease specialist, said that the Thymosin Alpha 1 is a very unique molecule not just in Covid, but also in other infections and other involvements of other organs as well. So, in that respect, it’s a diverse molecule, it’s got multiple actions at multiple levels. Moreover, the evidence through which it works for Covid.
“Thymosin Alpha 1 works in other conditions like Septicemia or ARDS which is the injury that happens to the lungs because of other conditions as well. In all these situations, Thymosin Alpha has a big role to play because what it does is, modulates the immune system. The immune system of a patient who gets infected with Covid is in a hyper-stimulated state that means it has irritated the immune system and nature can cause a great deal of disturbance, havoc and damage that’s the nature of what happens to the immune system in such severe infections. Thymosin Alpha is capable of settling this inflammation at multiple levels,” he said.
Thymosin Alpha 1 has a history of the treatment of diseases in which the immunity is dysregulated like in hepatitis, AIDS and SARS. COVID-19 is a disease that primarily attacks the immune system of an individual. Thymosin alpha 1 has been proven by research studies to be a safe and effective medication in the treatment of COVID-19. Thymosin alpha is an immunomodulator that activates T cells in our body which helps to kill the virus and modulates immunity perfectly.
Dr Shrivastava further explained that the evidence is not just on paper, but they have used it when the trial was going on in Thymosin Alpha. They had been used on 20 patients during the trial and after the trial, I have used it on about 35-40 patients at the very least. So, if you select the patient carefully and you time the therapy correctly, it works very well. “It will settle the immune system and the inflammation in such a way, where the cytokine that is capable of causing multiple organ damage and sometimes even you know unfortunately patients succumbing to the cytokine damage gets limited to a bare minimum even before it has started,” he added.
Dr Rahul Pandit, Director of Critical Care Medicine at Fortis Hospital and a member of the state Covid-19 task force, said till date, he has treated more than 55 patients with Thymosin Alpha 1. Of this, the first 15 patients who were there have been studied and then they used it on another 40 odd patients as a repurposed drug. “In my group of patients, all were severe Covid patients admitted to critical care unit having one or more organ failure requiring a high amount of oxygen and at least noninvasive ventilator support or High-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) support and of course those who were on a ventilator as well we use this molecule for those patients as well. However, there are reports not in my study not in my experience of this being useful for mild and moderate cases as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Pandit also advice to other doctors that if patients are severely ill and have got very low lymphocyte count especially below 10 per cent or absolute count below 1000 they can try this therapy, which will help as an adjuvant to improve your NLR and thereby blunt your immune response and help your natural killer cells CD4 and CD8 count to improve and thereby improve your patient's immunity.
