Paper on Thai herbs effects in treating Covid withdrawn due to insufficient evidence
Dr Sant Chaiyodsilp, a heart surgeon and family medicine specialist, said the research team studying the use of the Thai herb Fah Talai Jon (Andrographis paniculata) for the treatment of Covid-19 needed to consider a larger sample before coming to conclusions.
On Saturday, the Thai research team who had conducted a randomised controlled trial and concluded that Andrographis paniculata could be used to treat Covid-19 and that it has a beneficial effect in reducing the incidence of pneumonia, withdrew their paper from the archives of the peer-valued journal, "medRxiv", due to an error in calculating the significance of the difference.
The withdrawal of the paper from "medRxiv", an Internet site distributing unpublished eprints about health sciences, was aimed at preventing the misuse of the research findings.
The study reported that 29 Andrographis paniculata users did not have pneumonia, while in the placebo group of 28, three had pneumonia.
Correct calculation showed that the effect of using Andrographis paniculata in reducing pneumonia was no different from using a placebo.
Sant said the research needed to be repeated with a larger sample because as long as the vaccine hasn't arrived yet, this will still be a big issue.
Sant also said that the Center of Applied Thai Traditional Medicine, which is a part of the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, is doing the same research and may release its work soon.