A group of Bangladeshi researchers claim they have discovered a medicine to boost the platelet count and reduce the risk of bleeding out to effectively treat dengue.
They told weekly medical journal ‘The Lancet’ that administering ‘Eltrombopag’ in small doses showed results.
A team of 12 researchers, including Dr Mousumi
Sanyal of Dhaka Medical College Hospital and Prof AHM Nurun Nabi of Dhaka University’s Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, carried out the test.
The Lancet article said the immune system of the body becomes weaker due to severe complications of the liver and the platelet count drops after giving chemotherapy to leukemia patients, a condition which is called thrombocytopenia or thrombocytes.
The success of using Eltrombopag to treat such conditions is evident. The experiment was planned under the impression that the medicine would be useful to treat dengue, the symptoms of which is similar to thrombocytopenia in terms of reduced platelet.
“The people of Dhaka were afflicted with dengue in 2019. People scramble in search of blood as platelet count drops because of dengue,” Prof Nurun Nabi told bdnews24.com. “When a helpless patient could not manage blood at such a time, Dhaka Medical College’s Dr Mousumi used Eltrombopag to save him. The patient recovered the next day.”
“Due to this success, she treated four other patients with the medicine. But in those five cases, two returned good results, two moderate while the result was not at the expected level in the other case.”
Prof Nabi said later the team applied Eltrombopag on 101 dengue patients and found ‘evidence of efficacy’.
“We’ve also looked into whether the medicine has any side effects because for many the increase in platelets may be harmful. But we found no such evidence.”
“Only three percent had side effects similar to diarrhoea,” he added.
The experiment brought in patients from Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Better Life Hospital and AMZ Hospital. Among them, 77 had normal dengue fever while the other 24 had dengue haemorrhagic fever.
Prof Nabi also elaborated on the experiment.
