Can a Combination of Natural Anti-Parasitic Medicines be Used Againist Covid-19 Pandemic ?

 

I was thinking since there is so much objections by FDA, WHO and Ministries of Health throughout the world, and other health authorities for ivermectin to be used for Covid-19, why not use this antiparasitic drug in its natural form since the use traditional or complementary medicine is encouraged and recognized by all countries throughout the world, including WHO and FDA and they will have no objection if medicines are used in their natural form. 

Allow me to explain.

 A Japanese scientist by the name of Omura was studying a group of soil bacteria called Streptomyces, which also gave us the antibiotic streptomycin when he isolated new strains of Streptomyces from thousands of soil samples and successfully cultured 50 of them in the laboratory which was later found to produce the natural form of ivermectin, the name given for the current synthetic form.

Working separately was Irish-born researcher William Campbell, an expert parasitologist who discovered avermectin in this group, and avermectin is the natural form of ivermectin against parasites.

It was avermectin that was synthesized into ivermectin, which works against the parasites that cause river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, also called elephantiasis affects 100 million people around the world.

Similarly, chloroquine and its derivative hydroxychloroquine are also antiparasitic drugs against the malarial parasite and is almost similar to the natural form quinine found in cinchona bark. 

Although natural quinine is not exactly the same as synthetic chloroquine and later hydroxychloroquine, developed in the 1950s from chloroquine, all three have a chemical structure in that they contain a ring system known as a quinoline.

Historically, hydroxychloroquine was discovered during efforts to synthesise alternatives to quinine as anti-malarials. 

They are all anti-parasitic malarial drugs, but we have not much information if quinine can be used as an anti-covid virus agent although it was also claimed that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are also effective against covid, and both chloroquine and ivermectin are anti-parasitic synthetic drugs, something common among them. 

Now we have another Chinese pharmacologist from China by the name of Youyou Tu who discovered another natural herbal medicine called arteminisin extracted from a plant called Artemisia annua which worked so-well against malaria for which she, Youyou Tu, Omura and William Campbell won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Medicine or in Physiology.

It looks like to me at least these natural anti-parasitic medicines – quinine (from the bark of cinchona tree), avermectin (from the soil), and arteminisn from the plant (Artemisia annua) may hold the key to this Covid problem that has plagued the best scientific and medical minds for almost 3 years now (2018 – 2021).

If the combination of all these 3 natural medicines is effective, and since natural, complementary and traditional medicine are recognized throughout the world including WHO, FDA wouldn’t this combination be far better than just synthetic chloroquine, ivermectin working alone.

I am sure none of these authoritative bodies have any objections for these 3 combination natural medicines to be used against Covid?

The problem with FDA is, they allow natural medicines to be used freely, but not if they are made into their synthetic form for which FDA demands tens of thousands of pages of data on safety and efficacies that take teams of scientific experts working for 10 to 18 years in drug companies to produce.

I don’t think this is practical or fair.

Allow me to give just one simple example, using aspirin.

Aspirin was originally from a natural medicine extracted from the white willow bark. Willow bark extract has been used for thousands of years as an anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, and analgesic.

The use of willow bark dated back to the time of the Greek physician, Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460 - c. 370 BC), the Father of Medicine when he advised people to chew on the bark to reduce fever and inflammation. 

This bark has also been used throughout the centuries in China and Europe, and continues to be used today for the treatment of pain specially low back pain and osteoarthritis, headache, and inflammatory conditions, such as bursitis and tendinitis.

The bark of white willow contains salicin, which is a chemical similar to aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).  Other powerful anti-inflammatory compounds called flavonoids in white willow bark, working together with salicin are responsible for the pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory effects of the herb. In fact, in the 1800s, salicin was used to develop aspirin.

The body converts salicin in willow bark to salicylic acid, which in its synthetic form is called acetylsalicylic acid or aspirin. But there is a difference.

Although willow bark extracts are generally standardized to salicin, other ingredients in the extracts including other salicylates as well as polyphenols, and flavonoids may also play prominent roles in the therapeutic actions. Adverse effects appear to be minimal as compared to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs including aspirin.

Of course, aspirin is a very old drug in prominent use in conventional allopathic till today, and does not require further consent from FDA anymore.

But suppose aspirin was synthesised today, it will still need all those horrendously lengthy data to be submitted to FDA for approval.

But if natural salicin from white willow bark were to be used as a traditional medicine, it will go through straight away without any need for clearance and license from the FDA, but not aspirin if it is newly synthesized

The irony is, what then is the difference between synthetic aspirin and natural salicin when once consumed, the body converts it into aspirin-like salicylic acid to give exactly, if not even better pharmacological outcome.

In fact, salicin from white willow bark just like in all natural medicines, although slower in action, is not only much safer, but its action is far more long-lasting than the synthetic versions. 

In fact around 70 percent of all new drugs introduced in the United States in the past 25 years have been derived from natural products, according to reports of a study published in the March 23 issue of the Journal of Natural Products.

In summary, consider the combination of anti-parasitic natural quinine, avermectin, and possibly even antimalarial arteminisn to be used against Covid-19

It may be worthwhile a study based on these observations that antiparasitic drugs may also exhibit antivirus actions.