Nagpur: Two internal medicine specialists, Dr Nitin Shinde and Dr Nirmal Jaiswal, have found that a forgotten supportive therapy has been reintroduced and “shown impressive results” among several Covid-19 patients during treatment at different private hospitals in the city and across the country.
The doctors claimed that ‘Thymosin Alpha 1’ helps in controlling the cytokine storm in which the body’s immune system releases too many cytokines too quickly making them harmful. Thymosin Alpha 1 is a drug molecule or a type of hormone named as Immunocin Alpha 1.
Dr Shinde said the supportive therapy doesn’t have any side-effects and also checks Covid mortality rate.
Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, they said the drug if given from the sixth day of infection has to be continued twice a day for 14 days to boost the immunity against Covid-19 infection.
The doctors presented a slide show which stated that the Thymosin Alpha 1 was developed in 1979 and used during several outbreaks.
“Critical care specialists across India are recommending the use of this molecule in moderate to severe Covid-19 patients. The treating physician decides the dose of Immunocin Alpha 1 depending on the severity of Covid-19 symptoms. The drug has been well tolerated without any adverse effects,” said Dr Shinde.
Immunocin Alpha 1 has shown benefit in treatment of Covid-19 patients with comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease and in elderly patients, they claimed.
“Thymosin Alpha 1 has a history of treatment of diseases in which the immunity is dysregulated, like hepatitis, AIDS and SARS,” said Dr Shinde.
According to Dr Shinde, Immunocin Alpha 1 is a wonderful molecule. “We are using it since the beginning of the pandemic. I started using it when I developed moderate to severe Covid pneumonia,” he said.
Most of the therapies in Covid-19 treatment are still experimental and there is mixed data about the efficacy. “However, it is important that whatever therapy we choose, it should be first safe and then effective on ground level. We have used this molecule in around 200 cases mostly in moderate variety. All these patients have shown a good improvement in resolution of fever, and inflammatory markers by restoration of lymphopenia,” he said.
Dr Jaiswal said, “I had even prescribed this molecule to patients taking treatment at home for Covid-19. The measure changes that I had seen is that the lymphocyte count started coming up within a week as soon as patients were given this therapy. Besides, the ICU stay of patients also came down.”