A Nigerian university, the Federal University Dutse (FUD) in northern Jigawa state, has concluded plans for the clinical trial of a plant based COVID-19 medicine.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof. Fatima Batul-Mukhtar, said on Friday that the university swung into action as soon as the pandemic broke in Nigeria and mandated its Directorate of Research and Development to come up with home grown solution to tackle the disease.
He noted that the world over, universities are established for teaching, research and community service.
The Head of the Research team, Dr. Salihu Ibrahim, said the team collaborated with traditional medical practitioners to identity and extract medicinal plants with recorded history of use for the treatment of severe fever, protracted cough and acute pneumonia.
He said the team followed the time tested scientific steps of identifying, screening and extracting the medicinal plants.
“The head of the research team said second step was the phytochemical screening and analysis of the medicinal plant, where phytochemical activities were determined and analysed before the screening of the medicinal plants against microbial isolates.
“He said the evaluation of the toxicity of the medicine on experimental animals has been completed, adding that evaluation of the acute toxicity safety profile for 28 days on experimental animals is in progress.
“The head of the Research team said the first clinical trials on healthy volunteers will begin from May 14 to June 14, while the clinical trail on patients with pneumonia will start from June 14 June to July 14,’’ he said.
MM/GIK/APA