Yavatmal doc’s asthma drug for Covid treatment theory gets Oz patent

Nagpur: Use of asthma drug montelukast, mooted for Covid-19 management by a Yavatmal psychiatrist, has been granted an innovation patent in Australia.
Dr Prashant Chakkarwar, a practising psychiatrist in Yavatmal, has also been treating Covid patients on the basis of his basic MBBS degree.
Dr Chakkarwar has been pushing the case for montelukast as a cheap alternative treatment for breathlessness and clotting due to Covid-19 infection.He had made a representation before an expert committee of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) during the first wave. It was part of a number of other suggestions made at that time.
However, the doctor also clarifies that getting a patent does not mean that this has been officially included as a treatment by the government in India. The patent only gives him a legal right over use of montelukast as antidote to Covid-related complication. “If any pharmaceutical company markets the drug with similar indications, I can enforce my intellectual property right, although I don’t intend to do so,” he said.
Dr Chakkarwar said the purpose of securing a patent was only to get authenticity to his theory. There are reports of clinical trials of the drug being conducted elsewhere in the country, he said.
According to Dr Chakkarwar’s theory, montelukast is a leukotriene receptor antagonist and is used against lung inflammation during asthma treatment. In other words, it acts against chemicals in blood which lead to lung inflammation and injury.
Even in Covid, lung inflammation takes place due to cytokine storm, which is basically excessive immunological response of the body. He says even as there is no research confirming leukotriene involvement during cytokine storm, it has been his experience that montelukast works when administered to a Covid patient. He also claims that the drug acts against hyper coagulation of blood (clotting) in a Covid patient.
Minute clots in the blood stream formed post Covid are also taking lives due to heart attack and brain stroke.
Even as depression is a known side-effect of montelukast, it can happen after long-term consumption and not for a brief period during Covid treatment, claimed Dr Chakkarwar.
Dr Chakkarwar said the montelukast theory was initially a hypothesis. However, the drug was also administered to around 300 Covid patients during treatment. No clinical trials were taken up as this has to be done at institutional level, he said. However, Dr Chakkarwar’s article was published in Journal of Evidence Based Medicine and Health Care, after which an application was filed in Australia on July 26, 2021, and an innovation patent was granted on December 24, 2021. He has shared the patent certificate with TOI.
In India, the same attempts were slowed down by red tape, said the psychiatrist.