Did Meldonium Help Sharapova?

From the New York Times March 10:

Meldonium is sold under the brand name Mildronate by Grindeks, a company in Latvia, where the drug was invented in the 1970s, and has been one of the country’s major exported products. It is now made by other companies as well.

Meldonium “is used to prevent death of ischemic cells and not to increase performance of normal cells,” it said in a statement. “Meldonium cannot improve athletic performance, but it can stop tissue damage in the case of ischemia,” which is lack of blood flow to the heart.

Still, one of the drug’s inventors, Ivars Kalvins, told a newspaper in 2009 that the drug had been used to increase the endurance of Soviet troops lugging heavy equipment in Afghanistan. And Grindeks’s website says that in addition to its use for cardiovascular disease, the drug is used “for the improvement of work capacity of healthy people at physical and mental overloads and during rehabilitation period.”