Ivermectin has been found to have no clinical benefits in treating the coronavirus infection despite being considered as an alternative treatment by many health professionals and advertised by high-profile individuals, a large-scale study has found.
The research was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial that was primarily conducted to test if ivermectin was able to reduce the need for hospitalization among 1,358 COVID-19 patients at high risk of severe disease. The international team of researchers who conducted the trial concluded that the drug did not provide significant or meaningful protection against the coronavirus.
Ivermectin as COVID-19 Treatment
The research group, dubbed "TOGETHER," also found that ivermectin failed in preventing or reducing all other secondary outcomes of the coronavirus infection. This includes the time to recover, time to viral clearance on PCR test, time spent in the hospital, the need for mechanical ventilation, the duration of mechanical ventilation, death, or the time of death.
The findings of the large study echo similar results from other smaller trials and the current medical consensus that ivermectin is not a proven or effective treatment against COVID-19. The drug is typically used to treat gastrointestinal parasites and river blindness in humans and in veterinary medicine to deworm horses, cows, cats, and dogs, as per ArsTechnica.
Podcast host Joe Rogan was among the high-profile individuals who touted the alleged "effectiveness" of using ivermectin to treat coronavirus infection. He said that he even used the deworming drug on himself. There were also some doctors who prescribed the drug to patients suffering from the infection.
Despite the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not approving the drug as a COVID-19 treatment, prescriptions for ivermectin rose to 88,000 per week last August. The number started off from a meager 3,600. The situation prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue a warning against the use of the drug.
Clinical Trials
According to Yahoo Finance, CDC officials said that the agency's poison control center had already observed a fivefold increase in calls related to ivermectin overdoses and adverse effects. The scientists who are part of the TOGETHER study issued their initial results last August but published the full peer-reviewed study this week in The New England Journal of Medicine.
An infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, Dr. David Boulware, said that there was really "no sign of any benefit," referencing ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. Some skeptics said that the drug became popular because it may have been effective in experiments that used high concentrations which are far beyond safe levels for humans.
In one small-scale trial, Andrew Hill, a virologist at the University of Liverpool in England, reviewed the result of 23 trials in December 2020 and concluded that the drug appeared to have significantly lowered the risk of death from the coronavirus.
The medical professional said that if larger trials could confirm his findings, it could be a "transformative treatment" for people suffering from COVID-19. Ivermectin's popularity led to U.S. insurance companies spending $2.4 million for treatments related to the drug, the New York Times reported.
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