Newsinc24 Team 
The first batch of the drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose has been released by the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr. Harshvardhan in New Delhi on Monday.Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr. Harshvardhan appreciated the efforts of the scientists of DRDO and Dr. Reddy’s Lab for the development of this anti COVID drug. He said, this medicine is the result of one year of hard work by scientists. He said, this medicine has a huge potential in preventing corona virus growth.The drug has been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organization, DRDO which recently got the approval for emergency use from the Drugs Controller General of India, DCGI.
Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence. A higher proportion of patients treated with 2-DG showed RT-PCR negative conversion in COVID patients. The drug will be of immense benefit to the people suffering from COVID-19. According to the Ministry of Defence, in efficacy trends, the patients treated with the 2-DG drug showed faster symptomatic cure than Standard of Care (SoC) on various endpoints. A significantly favourable trend (2.5 days difference) was seen in terms of the median time to achieving normalisation of specific vital signs parameters when compared to SoC.
In the 2-DG arm, a significantly higher proportion of patients improved symptomatically and became free from supplemental oxygen dependence. A similar trend was observed in patients aged more than 65 years. 2-deoxy-D-glucose also reduces the hospital stay of COVID-19 patients. The drug accumulates in the virus infected cells and prevents virus growth by stopping viral synthesis and energy production. Its selective accumulation in virally infected cells makes this drug unique. "Being a generic molecule and analogue of glucose, it can be easily produced and made available in plenty in the country," the Ministry of Defence stated.
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