Arbidol: could Unregulated Sales be Putting the Public at Risk?
Will Dunn of New Statesman makes some valid points about the unregulated sales of ARBIDOL®. We address a few further points below:
There is no doubt that scammers will always try to make the most of any crisis, and Amazon and Ebays history of regulating fake goods is far from great. We recommend you stick to sellers who can offer you some guarantees. You can also personally test the validity of most medicines by comparing packaging and codes against online versions, as you would with any counterfeit, whilst this protects your health it does not protect your wallet.
We wholly agree, that unregulated sales can be dangerous and that greater care should be taken when allowing certain medicines and sellers access to UK markets- but our proposed solution would be comparisons of medicines, vetting etc.
We would also urge Amazon and eBay to halt and regulate the sale of any and all drugs which are licensed pharmaceuticals, because we may not know which effects they may have over the long term. As well as this, we know that Arbidol has come under fire from the Russian Academy of Science, as has the state media advertising it.
Our response to this, however, is that we try to stay at arm’s length from political games, the academy itself is a valid institution but as of yet, we do not have any word on how so many Chinese studies are bolstering the claims purported by the makers of Arbidol.
Such claims can be found in the footnotes of our article on Arbidol (Umifenovir). Where claims such as ‘
Studies have shown that Arbidol, compared with untreated control groups effectively inhibits coronavirus up to 60x at concentrations of 10–30 μmol/L, and ‘significantly inhibit the virus’ pathological effect on cells’1Wu, C., Liu, Y., Yang, Y., Zhang, P., Zhong, W., Wang, Y., Wang, Q., Xu, Y., Li, M., Li, X., Zheng, M., Chen, L. and Li, H. (2020). Analysis of therapeutic targets for SARS-CoV-2 and discovery of potential drugs by computational methods. Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B. [online] Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211383520302999 [Accessed 10 Mar. 2020]. are discussed in more detail, and we discuss the mechanism of action (MoA) of Arbidol in depth.
Another Criticism levelled by Dunn is that mostly these medicines do not offer translated instructions, however, some Russian sellers actually do offer translated copies of the medicines instructions. As such if you are planning to purchase Arbidol, do avoid poorly regulated sources like Amazon and eBay, and please, do your own research first. We personally recommend CosmicNootropic, because we have reviewed them several times and never had an issue with their delivery or the quality of those items.
Dunn also mentions that some of these drugs are not licensed in the UK or USA – he does not mention why, leaving the reader to draw nebulous conclusions. He is right that the drug has not been shown yet to my knowledge, to work as a standalone treatment for coronavirus. However, several researchers have said it helps as we mention in the article, and the MoA suggests it should do so.
The very manufacturers of the drug list its effectiveness against drugs in the Coronavidae family, which has been known about for some time before the SARS-CoV-2 strain. As mentioned in our article, several theorists including Li Lanjuan have already suggested it should work, and trials, although they have been in conjunction with other drugs, do corroborate this claim.
If you have any feedback or comments on our article, we welcome them at admin@nootropic.press
This article was brought to you by the Nootropic Press team
Footnotes:
- Newstatesman.com. (2020). How coronavirus is worsening the UK’s problem with unlicensed drugs. [online] Available at: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/coronavirus/2020/03/what-arbidol-russian-coronavirus-cure-being-sold-ebay [Accessed 19 Mar. 2020].
- Wu, C., Liu, Y., Yang, Y., Zhang, P., Zhong, W., Wang, Y., Wang, Q., Xu, Y., Li, M., Li, X., Zheng, M., Chen, L. and Li, H. (2020). Analysis of therapeutic targets for SARS-CoV-2 and discovery of potential drugs by computational methods. Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B. [online] Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211383520302999 [Accessed 10 Mar. 2020]
- TropicPingu (2020). Viruses that Strive for World Rulership. [online] Nootropic Press | Best Nootropics Guides | Reviews. Available at: https://nootropic.press/the-virus-that-strives-for-world-rulership/ [Accessed 19 Mar. 2020].
Asking questions are in fact good thing if you are not understanding anything totally, but this post provides fastidious understanding even.
Thanks for your feedback. The reason for the level of information provided is that a lot of nootropics websites typically provide very brief content, often missing useful details which can be of detriment to nootropics users. The scene can feel a lot like the wild west to the uninitiated. Here at Nootropic Press we want to be able to provide a high-level understanding for people who are interested in testing themselves whilst on these medicines, not just taking them blindly.
All my best!