University of Oxford scientists are
trialing giving Ivermectin to people with Covid symptoms to see if it can keep them out of hospital. The BBC reports:
The Principle study will compare those given the drug to patients receiving the usual NHS care. The drug has become controversial after being promoted for use across Latin America and in South Africa, despite being so far unproven. Previous studies of Ivermectin have generally been small or low quality. Most commonly used to treat parasitic infections such as river blindness, spread by flies, Ivermectin has also been shown to kill viruses in petri dishes in the lab -- although, at much higher doses than would usually be prescribed to people.
Dr Aurora Baluja, an anaesthesiologist and critical care doctor, said Ivermectin was often being given in parts of the world where there are high incidences of parasitic infections. Covid patients who are also fighting a parasitic disease at the same time would be likely to fare worse and that might explains some of its seemingly positive effect. Though there have been some early "promising" results from small and observational studies, Principle joint chief investigator Prof Richard Hobbs said it would be "premature" to recommend Ivermectin for Covid. [...] The Oxford team said they had selected Ivermectin to be included in the trial because it was "readily available globally" and known to be relatively safe (although, like most things, it can be toxic at very high doses). People aged 18-64 with an underlying health condition or experiencing breathlessness, and anyone aged 65 or over, can sign up to the Principle study within 14 days of having Covid symptoms or receiving a positive test. "All in all, though, the most compelling reports of ivermectin's effects seem to come from the smallest and least controlled samples (all the way down to anecdotal results) while the larger and more well-controlled trials tend to produce equivocal evidence at best," writes Derek Lowe, a medical chemist working in the pharmaceutical industry. "My current opinion is pretty much exactly that of the
WHO guidance: I do not think that the current evidence is strong enough to say that ivermectin is a useful therapy for coronavirus patients. I know that there are quite a few studies out there in the literature, but they suffer from various combinations of small sample size, poor trial design, not enough data reported, and (in many cases) inconclusive statistics."
Should people on their deathbeds be allowed to try anything to save themselves? Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? These are some of the questions American author, journalist, and podcaster Matt Taibbi
poses in an article via Substack. He argues that ivermectin "has become hostage to a larger global fight between populists and anti-populists."
UPDATE (2/18/2021): CNN reports "The antiparasitic drug ivermectin
doesn't prevent severe disease from Covid-19 any more effectively than symptom management and close observation by medical professionals, according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine."
In fact, slightly more patients in the ivermectin group went on to need extra oxygen compared with those who took a placebo, though the difference was not statistically significant....
[T]hey also looked at whether patients needed to be hospitalized, had to go on a ventilator, needed intensive care or died from their infections. There was no meaningful difference in outcomes between the group that took ivermectin and those who got the placebo treatment.
It was a randomized-controlled trial, the gold standard of medical research, in which researchers test an intervention against a placebo....
In addition to the fact that ivermectin didn't work, people who took it had more side effects than those who didn't, and sometimes those side effects were severe, including heart attacks, anemia and diarrhea that led to shock.