A new peer-reviewed study by Dr Pierre Kory and colleagues on Ivermectin has been published in the American Journal of Therapeutics. Entitled “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19“, it provides a new authoritative overview of the evidence to date and calls for the widely available drug to be “globally and systematically deployed in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19”.
The study summarises the impressive evidence base for the use of Ivermectin.
1. Since 2012, multiple in vitro studies have demonstrated that Ivermectin inhibits the replication of many viruses, including influenza, Zika, Dengue, and others.
2. Ivermectin inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication and binding to host tissue through several observed and proposed mechanisms.
3. Ivermectin has potent anti-inflammatory properties with in vitro data demonstrating profound inhibition of both cytokine production and transcription of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), the most potent mediator of inflammation.
4. Ivermectin significantly diminishes viral load and protects against organ damage in multiple animal models when infected with SARS-CoV-2 or similar coronaviruses.
5. Ivermectin prevents transmission and development of COVID-19 disease in those exposed to infected patients.
6. Ivermectin hastens recovery and prevents deterioration in patients with mild to moderate disease treated early after symptoms.
7. Ivermectin hastens recovery and avoidance of ICU admission and death in hospitalised patients.
8. Ivermectin reduces mortality in critically ill patients with COVID-19.
9. Ivermectin leads to temporally associated reductions in case fatality rates in regions after ivermectin distribution campaigns.
10. The safety, availability, and cost of ivermectin are nearly unparalleled given its low incidence of important drug interactions along with only mild and rare side effects observed in almost 40 years of use and billions of doses administered.
11. The World Health Organisation has long included ivermectin on its “List of Essential Medicines.”
The quality of the evidence for Ivermectin has been challenged, leading many countries including the U.K. and U.S. not to recommend its use for COVID-19. The study takes this criticism head-on.
Although a subset of trials are of an observational design, it must be recognised that in the case of ivermectin (1) half of the trials used a randomised controlled trial design (12 of the 24 reviewed above) and (2) observational and randomised trial designs reach equivalent conclusions on average as reported in a large Cochrane review of the topic from 2014. In particular, OCTs that use propensity-matching techniques (as in the Rajter study from Florida) find near identical conclusions to later-conducted RCTs in many different disease states, including coronary syndromes, critical illness, and surgery. Similarly, as evidenced in the prophylaxis and treatment trial meta-analyses as well as the summary trials table, the entirety of the benefits found in both OCT and RCT trial designs aligns in both direction and magnitude of benefit. Such a consistency of benefit among numerous trials of varying sizes designs from multiple different countries and centres around the world is unique and provides strong, additional support.
A hint of the politics around Ivermectin can be gleaned in the discussion section, where the authors wonder how much more evidence a cheap, safe drug like Ivermectin needs in an international emergency before it can be approved.
The continued challenges faced by health care providers in deciding on appropriate therapeutic interventions in patients with COVID-19 would be greatly eased if more updated and commensurate evidence-based guidance came from the leading governmental health care agencies. Currently, in the United States, the treatment guidelines for COVID-19 are issued by the National Institutes of Health. Their most recent recommendation on the use of ivermectin in patients with COVID-19 was last updated on February 11th, 2021, where they found that “there was insufficient evidence to recommend for or against ivermectin in COVID-19”. For a more definitive recommendation to be issued by major leading public health agencies (PHA), it is apparent that even more data on both the quality and quantity of trials are needed, even during a global health care emergency, and in consideration of a safe, oral, low-cost, widely available and deployable intervention such as ivermectin.
The authors add that further evidence is on its way and express an earnest hope that “if the above benefits in clinical outcomes continue to be reported in the remaining trials … this almost doubling of the current supportive evidence base would merit a recommendation for use by the WHO, NIH, and other PHAs”.
The study includes two striking graphs, from Peru and Uruguay, illustrating the strong association of Ivermectin use with reduction in Covid infections and deaths.
Considering how quickly vaccines using novel technology with unproven long-term safety records have been authorised for use, the failure to approve a known safe drug with considerable evidence to suggest clinical benefit is almost inexplicable. Some have suggested the resistance has been motivated by a wish among pharmaceutical companies to prioritise more profitable medicines like the vaccines. If so, this is a criminal example of putting profits before people.
It is good to see this study make it to publication. (There are rumours that some journals rejected it, not for any technical reason but because it would be controversial, possibly with their sponsors.) It is to be hoped there will be many more such studies, and a sea-change in regulators’ attitudes to repurposed medicines like Ivermectin.
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There are always unintended consequences. They never learn.
Sometimes, with progress, things do get better, for example, when I was boy, many children wore leg irons to counter the effects of polio, their legs were weak. There was one boy at school, we called him popsy, because of how he walked. He came from a football family called Rush, and popsy became the only footballer in the world to ever play well wearing leg irons. I’m not shitting you. I know you would not believe it was possible, but it was. And his brother became an Anfield legend called Ian who is to this day Liverpool’s leading goalscorer. So sometimes things occur without the side effects being worse, and one thing was polio vaccine. I’m sure the covid19 vaccine is another in the vast majority of cases.
The polio vaccine was actually a vaccine though. Well, the original one was. The new oral one that doesn’t need refrigeration – not so much. In fact that one actually causes polio. Wasn’t Bill Gates involved in that one?
https://journal-neo.org/2020/09/28/gates-vaccine-spreads-polio-across-africa/
But we can’t compare covid to polio, they are nothing like each other.
“when I was boy, many children wore leg irons to counter the effects of polio”
A few did – not many – and most of the decline in the incidence of polio had actually happened before the invention of the vaccine. As with most infectious illness, the key factor was improvements in public health.
This pattern is true of most vaccinations, useful though they may be in specific circumstances.
The situation re. SARS-CoV-2 isn’t remotely similar to these instances.
Pretty sure the destruction of the youth is intentional social engineering.
Well you can always give them more vaccines. And lovely profitable drugs.
Apart (so far) from vaccine, it seems impossible to take any measure that does not have some unintended consequencesthat turns out to be equal to or worse than the original problem. For example the dearth of flu over the last year (a supposed good effect) is likely to be offset in some future flu season when our collective loss of immunity will be revealed. I expect there will be moves to find a catchup vaccine to attempt to undo some of the loss of immunity, but I fear any such patches will only add to our debt to nature even more. In any case , I hope we will be done with lockdown in the near future, it has been an act of naive madness.
The risk/benefit analysis is at the heart of almost every prescription.
What has been different with Covid is that measures (basically of poisons, like lockdowns, masks and testing) have been prescribed with no proper risk assessment and, in many cases, in direct contradiction of previous strategic evaluations.
Unknown ‘vaccines’ have been given with no proper assessment of efficacy or risk.
We haven’t lost ‘flu it has simply been renamed – Covid 1984.
Lock up children. Hide human faces from them. Knicker their own faces. Jab them with monkey gunk. Forbid interaction with other kids. Stop school. Forbid sport. Forbid play. Blight childhood.
All worth it to make zombie cretins feel safe.
Methinks the covid period will go down in the history books as the stupidest time in human history.
If they had PCR tests for witches . . .
When our daughter was seven and being treated for cancer at the Children’s Hospital her oncologist mentioned that childhood leukaemias had increased 25% in a generation. The theory was that this was reaction to the fact that children were living in much more sterile environments, less contact with other children, less play outdoors, less dirt, less exposure to germs, and hence poorer immune systems.
Well of course. I mollycoddled my precious first born in the most ridiculous (I now see!) way. It was bleach-central in my house for about 12 months. Then when the little ming vase went to nursery I was flabbergasted to find that despite the breastfeeding forever and the general ‘healthful foods always’ mantra, she was ill all the damn time! Unlike the crazed covidians though, I realised the error of my ways and can now laugh at my madness and see it for what it was – that I was veering into mental health problems. Veering into mental health problems with absolutely no self awareness seems to be where most of society now is. And I hate to denigrate my own cohort but mums are some of the worst. Most of this stupid mask-shit and ‘we can’t see granny as you’ ll kill her’ shit is frankly child abuse.
Yes. I was delighted that a slight cold has just run round my four-year-old’s class, despite masks (adults), open windows, bubbles, distanced drop offs etc.
My daughter had a slight chesty cough and husky voice for about half a day; other children are a bit worse (perhaps because I’ve ignored as many restrictions as possible & continued seeing family throughout, so better immune system?).
It never crossed my mind not to send her into school. But for the other mums – ah, WhatsApp’s been lighting up with the opportunistic virtue signalling. The competitive shoving of tests up infant noses, the debating over appropriate testing protocol and where best to procure tests from, the days their little darlings have been kept home “just in case”. Bonkers.
The week our daughter went to nursery for the first time there were cases of hand, foot and mouth (which she caught) and impetigo in her class. She, and we, were ill for pretty much the next three months while we all caught all of the various bugs her classmates had. She seems pretty robust now healthwise.
Power of the media….needs to be repressed.
File this under ‘well dur’
New Zealand and Australia are going to suffer this problem in spades. And not just in their children either. Think of all of those strains of influenza and rhinovirus and indeed coronaviruses they are not being exposed to. And how devastating it could be for them if any one of those viruses arrives in the country if they continue cutting themselves off from the world for several more years.
And isn’t this just exactly as sunitra Gupta said!!!! Oh but government knows best!
“RSV can spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes, releasing contaminated droplets into the air. Transmission usually occurs when these droplets come into contact with (or inoculate) another person’s eyes, nose, or mouth. RSV can also live for up to 25 minutes on contaminated skin (i.e. hands) and several hours on other surfaces like countertops and doorknobs.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_syncytial_virus#Transmission)
If the NPIs did materially curtail respiratory syncytial virus transmission, are we clear why they can’t work for SARS-CoV-2?
I’m not sure of your point? I believe that covid has only “killed” three(?) babies in the UK, all of whom were already seriously ill. RSV is indistinguishable from a common cold to you or I – yet historically it’s responsible for the deaths of around 80 babies per year in the UK. They do their best to keep it out of neonatal ICU, and we as humans do our best by not kissing and cuddling our friends babies if we have symptoms of a cold.
But what else is there? Should we all isolate at home forever to save these 80+ babies? It is a shocking number but until now no one seemed to care. Perhaps we should?
I know that if were an expectant parent I’d certainly be cheesed off if the maternity unit expected to screen me for asymptomatic covid which is unlikely to be a serious threat, and yet simultaneously not be bothered if I actually had symptoms of RSV.
Worlds gone covid crazy.
“It is too early to know for certain”
Of course. But, as a hypothesis, it is in line with everything that is known about the development of the immune system.
It’s not too early, however, to know that there is absolutely no evidence to support the use of lockdowns, as opposed to the harms caused.
It is also too early to know that the vaccines have net benefit. But that seems not to matter.
Not just the development of their immune system that is damaged by the fanatics.
Perhaps someone at New Scientist can look through the archive editions back to 1979/80. I’m pretty sure there was a front cover shot around that time of a couple of cloth capped urchins poring over a puddle with a Glasgow tenement block (or similar) in the background with a caption along the lines of “Please leave me alone while I build my immune system”. Those were the days!