Dr. Sohaib Ashraf's randomized-controlled trial (RCT), which is still awaiting peer review, found that treating covid patients with black seed, as it is also called, along with honey helped them to recover within six days. The control group, meanwhile, took 13 days to recover.
Black cumin and honey also helped patients to achieve a "negative" PCR test about four days earlier than patients in the control group who were not given the healing remedy.
Ashraf's paper is currently available on the medRxiv preprint server, which is where an abundance of emerging research with incredible promise is being published these days.
"When Covid-19 struck in late March, soon it was clear to us that this disease is going to cause havoc across the globe and will act as a reset button for the world economy," Ashraf, who is also affiliated with Harvard Medical School, is quoted as saying.
"So, we searched for clinical trials published regarding proven efficacy of any drug against Covid-19, but unfortunately we identified no drug proven effective against Covid-19."
Ashraf and his colleagues pored through the scientific literature for anything else out there that is safe and has a wide range of efficacy against viruses and other microbes, along with anti-inflammatory, immune-modulatory, and anti-coagulant properties. This led them to honey and black cumin, which Ashraf describes as a "perfect fit."
"We reasoned that the combination could be more effective in attenuating severity of the disease, controlling viral replication and curing Covid-19 patients," Ashraf's paper explains.
Natural remedies work, even against covid
The study was carried out in Pakistan and involved 313 patients with either moderate or severe covid symptoms. Such symptoms included things like cough, fever, sore throat, nasal congestion and shortness of breath, along with pneumonia and respiratory distress in the more extreme cases.
None of the sick participants knew whether they were given black cumin and honey or a placebo. All of them were told to take whatever they were given two or three times daily.
All of the patients also received standard care from a physician, which included anti-pyretic drugs, antibiotics, supplemental oxygen and even mechanical ventilation if deemed necessary.
At the conclusion of the study, the honey and Nigella sativa (HNS) group experienced recovery from symptoms in either four days (moderate cases) or six days (severe cases), compared to 7-13 days for the control group.
The HNS treatment was also found to reduce mortality in the severe patients while also allowing 96.25 percent of moderate patients to resume normal daily activities by day 10. Only 68.93 percent of the control group, meanwhile, returned back to mostly normal after 10 days.
Amazingly, 30-day mortality was reported at 18.87 percent in the control group, compared to just four percent in the HNS treatment group.
"We have seen the patients getting miraculously better with this treatment regimen even outside the trial," Ashraf explained further. "As an inexpensive nutraceutical, this could be used alone or in combination with other drugs for additive effects. The treatment is very likely to reduce the burden on health care systems in a significant manner."
"It has great potential for commercialization but in order to prove whether it is the most effective treatment option available in the world, we may need to conduct larger RCTs."
Ashraf says his team is, in fact, planning to conduct a much larger, multinational trial using this same modality. In the meantime, both black seed supplements and honey are widely available for those who wish to get started right away on boosting their immune systems.
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