Coronavirus: Traditional Chinese medicines and the Ayurveda connection

With life-threatening side-effects of conventional drugs, doctors in China used traditional medicines on patients.

Business Standard had earlier reported how the Chinese tackled the first wave of coronavirus pandemic in the country through hospital isolation techniques, patient management and regulating professional and personal behaviour of medical personnel. But little is known about the drugs the Chinese deployed on patients which led to recoveries in many cases and extensive organ damage in others.

A report prepared by the Jack Ma Foundation based on notes prepared by frontline Chinese medical personnel throws light on the medication used on coronavirus patients and their consequences. The report also has extensive details of traditional Chinese medicine prescribed for various stages of the disease in an infected person.

The Chinese found that more than half the coronavirus-infected patients who were given a dose of the HIV drug lopinavir/ritonavir combined with the flu drug arbidol displayed signs of “abnormal liver function”. The HIV drug was one of the first drugs touted for treatment in the initial phase of the pandemic in India by the country’s health ministry. Administering lopanivir/ritonavir was also tied to diarrhoea, jaundice and abnormal rise of cholesterol levels in the blood among other consequences in coronavirus patients.

Combined with lopanivir, arbidol was found to further enhance the chances of jaundice. Chinese doctors stopped the use of this drug combination whenever the heart rate dropped below normal levels of 60 beats per minute. They recommended that using lopanivir/ritonavir with heart attack prevention drugs like statins, organ transplant facilitating drugs like immunosuppressants, schizophrenia drugs and other medications could lead to sudden cardiac death, severe coma and the death of muscle fibres which release a chemical into the blood, causing kidney failure. Such combinations were prohibited.