LAUSR

The recent corona virus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has uniquely challenged medical research community worldwide due to absence of any vaccine or proven therapy. Repurposing of already available drugs is a prudent strategy for immediate management of those severely affected by the disease. To that end, clinical interventional studies are being conducted with multitude of drugs ranging from seemingly innocuous like zinc to potentially toxic drugs. Traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM) especially traditional herbal medicines, however, find little mention in mainstream discourse of COVID-19 pandemic. A comprehensive search of four prominent clinical trial registers (Table 1) finds scant representation of studies on T&CM in Clinicaltrials.gov and EU Clinical Trial Register (1.6%), while interventions like hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin feature prominently (17.8%). Clinical studies involving drugs of narrow therapeutic index like colchicine or oncological drugs/radiotherapy (4.8%) with