Earlier this year, I was contacted by a Sydney GP who had a patient with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and wanted to know if Nasodine might help. I indicated that we had no clinical evidence in sinusitis, so could not provide any advice; however, I said that there is a preclinical 2023 paper by Hale
et al that suggests it could be useful (
https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.30558) and several people have advised me personally (purely anecdotal evidence) that it has helped them considerably with otherwise intractable chronic sinusitis.
The GP decided to tell his patient to import Nasodine and try it.
Some weeks later, the patient emailed Firebrick through our website contact page with the following message:
"My GP [
name and address redacted] has put me onto your product for my chronic sinus issues and it has changed my life."
She also wrote this review on our Singapore website:
"Due to side effects of Chemo i had chronic sinus issues that resulted in my living on antibiotics 48 weeks of the year ... for the last 5 years i have seen ENTs, immunologists, Chinese herbalists, integrative GPs the list goes on...until my GP recommended Nasodine. I use it 2-4 times a day (ideally 4 but you know how life is!) and i have not been on antibiotics for over a month which is the longest i have been without them in years. I have emailed them and they responded instantly and were very helpful. This product has changed my life literally, i cannot recommend it enough."
The GP contacted me again last week to thank Firebrick again for making this extraordinary product available, which has helped him solve an otherwise insoluble problem for one of his patients and stopped all the wasteful antibiotics.
I suggested he write a letter to the editor of a popular Australian medical journal (I won't name it here) about the case, and he did so last week. This week, the journal rejected his letter on the basis that they receive a lot of submissions and have to reject the majority. He is not going to submit anywhere else, so he gave me permission to post his case letter here. Here it is, exactly as submitted to the journal:
Nasodine as a treatment for chronic sinusitis
Dear Sir,I would like to report a highly successful intervention in a case of severe refractory chronic sinusitis.
A 40 year old female patient had 3 months of intensive chemotherapy after diagnosis with Burkitt Lymphoma of the abdomen and ovary in 2010. Subsequently, she suffered from hypogammaglobulinemia and numerous bouts of sinusitis starting in 2017. She was found to have bilateral Haller cells, which are associated with sinus obstruction and can contribute to recurrent acute or chronic sinusitis. She was given saline washes and steroid irrigations to no available, as well as repeated courses of antibiotics. The main organisms isolated were Strep. pneumoniae and Haemophilus spp. She underwent major sinus surgery in late 2018, but the sinus infections persisted and in mid-2019 she commenced IVIg infusions. However, the infections continued unabated, only relieved briefly by long courses of antibiotics. In the 7 years since 2018 she has had well over 200 courses of various antibiotics! I had heard about a 0.5% povidone-iodine nasal spray, called ‘Nasodine’, which is not yet approved in Australia but is available overseas as an OTC product. I suggested she try the Nasodine and remarkably she found immediate relief from the sinusitis. For treatment of sinusitis, she found that the maximum recommended dose of 4 sprays per nostril (total 0.8 mL) 4 times daily for 3 days was effective in controlling the infection. She also found that a dose of 2 sprays per nostril (total 0.4 mL) twice daily between sinusitis attacks was effective as maintenance regimen. In the 3 months that she has been using the Nasodine regimen, she has remained antibiotic-free with her sinusitis well-managed for the first time in more than 7 years.
Regards
[name redacted]
MBBS FRACGP
My view: The world needs Nasodine. It is a remarkable innovation that will help humankind in many ways. We developed it as a treatment for the common cold, and as the paper published last week stated, it is clinically effective if used early in the condition. We also know from a covid clinical trial that it stops viral shedding, so it could help stop the next pandemic. In a survey of Australian GPs that we did in 2021, they were keen to see Nasodine available for several reasons, including to protect their vulnerable patients from respiratory infections and to reduce prescribing of antibiotics. I guess we can now add treatment of sinusitis to the list of potential uses.
PM
