Ivermectin – once touted by conservatives as a Covid treatment – doesn’t improve recovery much, clinical trial shows
Ivermectin, a drug once touted by conservatives as a Covid treatment, is not meant to improve recovery time for people with mild to moderate Covid-19, according to a clinical trial. published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Those who took ivermectin recovered from Covid in 12 days while those who did not recover in 13 daysbase on the research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Friday. Ivermectin has been approved to treat parasitic worms in humans, but it is primarily used as a dewormer for horses.
“Among outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with ivermectin, compared with placebo, did not significantly improve recovery time,” said the team of scientists led by the University School of Medicine. Duke headed the write. They conclude: “These findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 disease.
Pandemic early when there are few treatment options, ivermectin achieve national fame when a couple conservative group of doctors, including the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance and Frontline Doctors of the US began to advertise the drug on social media and elsewhere as a treatment for Covid. But there is little data to support those claims, and a study by Dr. Pierre Kory, a Wisconsin-based critical care physician and president of the critical care coalition, asserts this is one approach. effective treatment was later withdrawn for having erroneous data.
The latest trial looked at 817 people who took the ivermectin pill for three days and compared it to 774 people who took a placebo. Participants already taking ivermectin received a daily dose based on their weight. Covid recovery is defined as three consecutive days without symptoms.
One person who died in the ivermectin group while not one person who received the placebo died. The number of people hospitalized in each group was the same, nine people each.
The study was conducted across 93 sites in the United States from June 2021 to May 2022 when delta variation and then omicron variation prevailed.
The Food and Drug Administration has not authorized ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid and has repeatedly warned people not to take the drug for anything other than its approved purpose.
Public interest in ivermectin spiked early in the pandemic when a laboratory study showed that the drug slowed the replication of the Covid virus in a petri dish. But several trials have now found that ivermectin does not provide any meaningful benefit to patients fighting Covid.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine, published in Mayfound that ivermectin did not reduce the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization.
Ivermectin is approved in the US in liquid or paste form to treat parasites in animals. There is also an FDA-approved tablet version for the treatment of parasitic worms, head lice, and certain human skin conditions.
“There’s a lot of misinformation going around and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. It’s not OK,” the FDA said on its website, warning people that it overdose is possible.
The Food and Drug Administration also sternly warns people against taking ivermectin formulations designed for animals such as horses and cows.
“First, animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used on large animals such as horses and cows, which are much heavier than us – up to a ton or more. Such high doses can be toxic to humans. people,” the FDA said.
