My sister-in-law's son-in-law, we call him Ashu, has made a full recovery from the dreaded Covid. A CT scan had shown him with a count of 20, a cause for immense worry. Ashu lives in N Delhi and works in the Medical Equipments industry. He is an energetic young man with an entrepreneurial bent of mind. He had set up his own business from a scratch and had received an award for entrepreneurship from the Times of India. The business, unfortunately, died down in the aftermath of demonetisation and GST, and he was forced to take up a job once again. Currently he is the sole breadwinner in the family and supporting his mother-in-law and father-in-law too. And so there was a palpable gloom in the family that deepened as his scan revealed less than hopeful prognosis.
Ashu has shared with me his treatment regimen, which I feel compelled to share with everyone. Of course I have no medical qualification to recommend it to others but am still sharing it in the hope that this may form a starting point when a Covid patient or a caregiver discusses a line of treatment with a qualified doctor.
His successful treatment is based on a regimen recommended by some doctors and shared on Facebook. I am providing a link to one of these videos at the end of this post.
These doctors ask to mark the day of start of symptoms including fever as day one. In most cases, the fever should go away on day 6th necessitating no further treatment. However if the fever persists or worsens, they recommend a heavy dose of methylprednisolone - 40 mg twice a day for five days, an anticoagulant, such as Apixaban 5mg, to be taken once a day, and nebulisation with Formoterol Fumarate and Budesonide mixture TDS and SOS.
Initially Ashu was given steriod but in a very low dose of 4 and 2 mg. When he went to another doctor who subscribed to the regimen mentioned above, he increased the dose to the level recommended in the videos. It is now three days after Ashu went off the medication and he is feeling absolutely fit and fine. He maintains that with all his problems in breathing, had he gone to a hospital to be put on oxygen, the result would not have been a happy one. He also practised proning and steam inhalation to relieve the symptoms.
It is important to add that Ashu doesn't have any history of diabetes and hence this line of treatment did not present any complications for him. However, as steroids are known to raise sugar levels, diabetics must mention the fact to their doctor and must abide by their advice.
Ashu also tells me that doctors normally use the tradename Medrol for the steroid and because of this the drug has disappeared and is available in the black market at 100 times the printed price! Though the same drug from different companies and with different tradenames is available at the normal rate but doctors and pharmacists are failing to suitably advise the patients in the matter. In case the drug is not available in the required strength, multiple tablets with lower strength can be taken to make up the dose.
I must emphasize that I have no medical qualifications and have narrated this case merely for information of my readers. They must not follow this line of treatment without consulting a qualified doctor after disclosing all their existing ailments to him. It can be fatal for diabetics to go for it without the recommendation and supervision of a doctor.
Here is the link to one of the videos that I had mentioned.
Extract from an article in The Hindu:
ReplyDelete“Steroids are the most potent weapon we have to combat COVID-19. But the therapeutic window for starting steroids has to be spot-on. Determining the timing, dosage and duration is an art which has to be mastered,” says Dr. Aravind.
One of the main concerns is that we do not want to start steroids too early in the illness when viral replication is happening as it might interfere with the immune system’s natural ability to fight back. We also do not want to miss that critical point when steroids can prevent the immune system from unleashing the cytokine storm, he says.
The WHO guidelines say that steroids may be administered to patients whose resting saturation levels are below 94% and whose respiration rate at rest is over 24 per minute. However, steroids can benefit some patients who are not on supplementary oxygen yet but are showing early indications that they might worsen.