New Delhi, Sep 30 (UNI) The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the spotlight on the health-promotive and disease-preventive solutions of Ayush disciplines which has seen a spate of new trials in the discipline.

According to the Clinical Trial Registry of India for the registered trials of Covid-19 involving Ayurveda intervention from March 1 to June 25, there were 58 new trials registered in Ayurveda during this period.

Out of the 203 trials registered in Clinical Trial Registry of India (CTRI), 61.5 per cent were from Ayush disciplines. A recent study published in the ‘Journal of Research in Ayurvedic Sciences’ titled “Ayurveda Research Studies on Covid-19 Registered in CTRI: A critical appraisal” throws more light on this growing “research-culture” in Ayush disciplines, an official release here said.

Of the CTRI registered trials involving Ayurveda and Covid-19, nearly 70 per cent of the trials were sponsored by the Government and various stakeholders of Ayurveda associated with the AYUSH ministry. These trials will provide useful information to the researchers which will help them to strategise the next course of action and also help the general public for understanding the contribution of Ayurveda in Covid-19.

Out of the 58 registered trials, 52 (89.66 per cent) are interventional trials and six (10.34 per cent) are

observational trials. The majority of the trials included adult participants of both the gender as the target

population. A total of 53 (91.38 per cent) trials intend to recruit participants aged 18 years or more, and only five (8.62 per cent) trials intended to recruit participants younger than 18 years.

Once completed, the results of these promising studies will expectedly be published at the earliest so that it will

be useful for the policymakers from the Ayush systems of medicines to strategise effective solutions to benefit

public health initiatives. Further, in these challenging times, they will provide information for the global

scientific community to know about the outcomes of Ayurveda clinical trials being conducted on Covi-19 in India. They will form potential source of information for further collaborative studies at the national and global levels.

The instant paper which is authored by researchers of the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences,

provides detailed information about Ayurveda based Covid-19 clinical trials with respect to administrative

information on trial registry number and sponsorship, descriptive information on study type and length of study

and study design. Further, it tracks information related to the registration date and actual study start date

and information related to recruitment, and all these have been collated, presented, and analysed based on the

trails’ information registered from March 1 to June 25, in the CTRI, the release added.