Troikaa to launch gel for fissures

Ahmedabad-based Troikaa Pharmaceuticals Ltd, will soon launch gel application for treating anal fissures.

Ketan Patel, managing director of Troikaa Pharma, told Business Standard, "In the first week of May we will launch Diltiazem gel for treating anal fissure." The company claims that Troikaa Pharma will be the first to launch the Diltiazem gel for the anal fissures.

Under the conventional treatments, the patients are either given local anesthesia or steroids as a temporary relief from pain and inflammation. But uptill now there was no specific treatment available for anal fissure disease in form of direct application for the cure of the disease.

Diltiazem is a old molecule that is already known to the medical world and it is normally used as calcium channel blocker for hyper tension (blood pressure) in different doses. Medical study throughout out the world had also proved that the 'Diltiazem' is also beneficiary for the treatment of anal fissure disease.

Diltiazem, when applied in lower quantity on the anal mucosa, it relaxes internal anal sphincter muscle that causes fall in maximum anal resting pressure resulting in reversible chemical sphincterotomy.

The company has carried out indigenous research to develop new drug delivery system of 'Diltiazem' in gel form for the application of anal fissure disease. Cyclical trial had been carried out by the company at five leading hospital - J J Hospital and KEM Hospital in Mumbai, V S Hospital, Ahmedabad, Choithram Hospital, Indore and Madras Medical College, Chennai.

"The cylical trial results had show 92 percent high cure rate", informs Patel. While P N Sharma, general manager - PMT, Troikaa Pharma, said, "The cyclical trial had been carried out on 184 patients at all the five hospitals in total". The cyclical trial duration was for nine months and the results were received in the months of February and March 2007.

Sharma claims that there are no commercial production of diltiazem in form of gel and his company is the first to launch commercial preparation of diltiazem gel. He further said that diltiazem gel is free from any kind of side affect.

Initially the company will launch the product in the domestic market and then in overseas market . The company had clocked a turnover of Rs 75 crore for the financial year ended on 31 March 2007. It expects to achieve a turnover of Rs 110- 120 crore for the financial year 2008.