Topic of medicines

2020/05/15 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Berdintasuna
• Mikrobiologia
• Farmakologia
• Osasuna
• Medikuntza

The Chinese government is driving the use of traditional medicine drugs to combat COVID-19. These drugs are accepted into your health system and have been sent to other countries, including Iran and Italy. However, the journal Nature warns that its safety and effectiveness is not guaranteed.

The western health system, in general, has always frozen traditional medicine and not just China. However, the contribution of traditional medicine to current therapies is undeniable. Proof of this is the Nobel Prize awarded to pharmacist Youyou Tu. In fact, to treat malaria, quinine or chloroquine was used, but less and less effectively. Faced with this, Youyou Tuk resorted to traditional Chinese medicine, isolating the active compound of the plant Artemisia annua, artemisina. Based on this, the new agents that kill malaria have been developed in the first phases of the cycle.

Youyou Tuk has been working on it for years, and the journey has been long. However, therapies that are now being used to cure covid-19 have no guarantee. Although they have been used for thousands of years to combat respiratory diseases, this time it is not possible to know what effect they will produce. Furthermore, they can be more harmful than giving nothing.

An example is the Ephesian plant.According to Nature, it is among the drugs recommended by the Chinese government. A plant stimulant, pseudoefredine, was used in Europe and USA. as a component of dietary and energy products, and was banned, as they proved to be the cause of several deaths.

In Africa, Science announces that a mixture of medicinal plants produced in Madagascar is spreading. Researchers are concerned that they can increase their resistance to the drugs used against malaria. In fact, the main component of the mixture is the anejo Artemisia, which, if used automatically, can generate resistance to artemisine (as it happens with antibiotics). It would be a very serious problem, as thanks to artemisin-based drugs, world deaths from malaria have gone from one million to 400,000. In addition, it is not shown that artemisine has any beneficial effect on covid-19.

Drugs used to fight other diseases are already being tested around the world to see if they are effective in curing covid-19. It seemed that one or the other could give good results, such as hydroxychloroquines. It is also used against malaria and the president of the US, Donald Trump, prompted undoubtedly and unreservedly its use, when the pandemic hit the country. However, as more research is conducted, no beneficial effect has been observed.

On the other hand, just as it happens whenever the health system cannot give an effective and definitive response, on this occasion the supply of sasi-medicine products has also increased. Institutions, the scientific community and journalists are working to identify them and avoid their socialization, since they are very dangerous but apparently harmless.

If it is a new use, all medicines must exceed the clinical sessions, even those already used against other diseases. About 600 known drugs are being tested in clinical sessions to check if they can treat covid-19. For the moment, only one has given good results, the antiviral Remdevisir. Therefore, they continue to investigate for safe and effective drugs.