A study on Chyawanprash as an immunity booster against Covid-19 has shown ‘encouraging results’, a Delhi government-run Ayurvedic hospital has claimed.
A four-month-long study on health care workers of Chaudhary Brahm Prakash Ayurved Charak Sansthan, the country’s biggest hospital of Indian system of medicine, has suggested that regular use of Chyawanprash can protect an individual from a severe infection of Covid-19.
The study was started in May last year on 200 Covid-19 negative healthcare professionals who were equally divided into two groups – Study and Control.
The Study group was administered 12 grams of Chyawanprash daily twice a day empty stomach in the morning at least one hour before breakfast and at night two hours after dinner with warm water.
Advertisement
The Control group followed the conventional guidelines for health care workers as per the WHO.
There was no incidence of Covid-19 case in any group at the end of the study period i.e. on the 30th day.
“However, in the long term follow-up after completion of the intervention period, the participants in the study group were found to be more protected from a severe infection of Covid-19 as only two participants were RT-PCR positive after 2 months of completion of the study period and both were asymptomatic,” Prof (Dr) Vidula Gujjarwar, the Director and Principal of the hospital said.
“On the other hand in the Control group, four participants were RT-PCR positive in the same duration, and one out of them had to be hospitalized,” Prof (Dr) Gujjarwar said.
Advertisement
The research was initiated on the hypothesis that Chyawanprash could potentially be used as a safe prophylactic intervention along with standard precautionary measures, to prevent symptomatic infection in the population having a high risk of exposure to the SARS CoV-2 virus.
“The manuscript is uploaded at the preprint (open access) platform medRxiv,” she said.
This is perhaps the first study on the benefits of Chyawanprash during Covid-19 by a reputed government-run institute.
Meanwhile, all top Chyawanprash companies like Dabur, Baidyanat, Zandu, etc have collaborated with Ayurvedic or allopathic hospitals and sponsored clinical studies to prove that their products are immunity booster against Covid.
In January 2021, Emami Ltd, the owner of the Zandu Chyavanprash brand, registered with the Clinical Trial Registry of India to conduct a study on healthy individuals to evaluate the efficacy of its brand. The study will be carried out at 5 centres in India.
A similar study was sponsored in May last year by Dabur India Ltd for its product Dabur Chyawanprash “as a preventive remedy in the pandemic of Covid-19.” The company had claimed that their study showed encouraging results.
Pharma dealers say companies that deal in herbal and Ayurvedic products want to make the most of Covid-19 and this is evident from the sale of their products during the pandemic.
Advertisement
"Ayurvedic as a category has seen tremendous growth on our platform. This had a positive tailwind due to the pandemic. Youngsters started consuming Amla, Ashwagandha, Moringa based products, chyawanprash, Curcumin etc for better immunity and this is nowhere to stay, at least that’s what data says,” Dharmil Sheth Co-founder, PharmEasy said.
He added, “We have seen over 400% growth since last year on this category and it keeps growing month on month at a steady rate."
