Ayurvedic drug Ayush-64 offers no benefit in Covid treatment: Study

An Ayurvedic formulation, promoted by the Narendra Modi government as a “ray of hope” for Covid-19 patients, has been found to offer “no statistically significant benefit” when compared with the standard Covid treatment, according to a new study.

Researchers at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur in collaboration with the National Institute of Ayurveda, Jaipur examined the safety and efficacy of the poly-herbal drug Ayush-64 as an add-on therapy.

The AIIMS researchers gave herbal medicine to 30 people in addition to the standard treatment while another group of 30 individuals received the standard care alone. Two tablets of 500 mg each were given thrice daily in the intervention group and the target outcome was comparing the RT-PCR negative status after five days.

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While 70% became RT-PCR negative in the Ayush-64 group the corresponding number in the control group was 54%. “Though the actual events of negative RT-PCR were more in the Ayush-64 group, this difference was not statistically significant. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups for fever and respiratory symptoms and laboratory parameters. No serious adverse events were reported from any group during the assessment period,” they reported in a paper, which is yet to be peer-reviewed and released on a preprint server.

But the Ministry of AYUSH in April-May released multiple press releases claiming that “Ayush-64 had emerged as a ray of hope for the patients of mild and moderate Covid-19 infection in the middle of the havoc wreaked by the second wave of the pandemic.”

In one such release issued on May 4, the government claimed, “It has been scientifically established to be useful in the treatment of asymptomatic, mild and moderate Covid-19 infection as an adjunct to standard care through robust clinical trials conducted in the country.”

“The results of the clinical trials demonstrated that Ayush 64 as an adjunct to standard care showed clinically significant improvement and thus lesser period of hospitalisation as compared to the standard care alone,” the government said in a statement, quoting a multi-centre study that showcased the beneficial effects of Ayush-64.

Taking note of the previous study, the AIIMS team suggested that because of the contradictory results from two different studies, the efficacy of Ayush-64 in Covid-19 treatment needed to be confirmed again in a large clinical trial in double-blind manner with adequate sample size.