The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has approved the emergency use of drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) as an adjunct therapy in moderate to severe Covid-19 patients. It has been developed by Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (Inmas), a lab of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad.
An adjunct therapy refers to an alternative treatment that is used together with the primary treatment. Its purpose is to assist the primary treatment.
“Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence. Being a generic molecule and analogue of glucose, it can be easily produced and made available in plenty. Higher proportion of patients treated with 2-DG showed RT-PCR negative conversion in Covid patients,” DRDO said in an official statement on Saturday.
According to DRDO, the patients treated with 2-DG showed faster symptomatic cure than Standard of Care (SoC) on various endpoints in the efficacy trends.
“A significantly favourable trend (2.5 days difference) was seen in terms of the median time to achieving normalization of specific vital signs parameters when compared to SOC,” it said.
The drug comes in powder form in sachets, which is taken orally by dissolving it in water.
Responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for preparedness against the pandemic, the DRDO took the initiative of developing anti-Covid therapeutic application of 2-DG. In April 2020, when the first wave of pandemic struck India, scientists at DRDO’s laboratory, Inmas, conducted experiments with the help of Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and found that this molecule works effectively against SARS-CoV-2 virus and inhibits the viral growth. Based on these results, Drugs Controller General of India’s (DCGI) Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) permitted Phase-II clinical trial of 2-DG in Covid-19 patients in May 2020.
