The Blog

2021-

2021-05-07 c
THE COVID-CON II

Peer-reviewed study finds that ivermectin is effective as prophylaxis for COVID-19 and as a therapeutic remedy

I expect that the corporate media will ignore as much as possible the findings of a peer-reviewed study just published in the American Journal of Therapeutics that concludes that the readily available, inexpensive (off-patent) drug ivermectin is effective in treating existing cases of COVID-19 and in preventing coming down with the illness. Unlike the experimental vaccines that we are being ceaselessly urged to take, ivermectin has been around for many years and is safe for all but a few people. From the article:

Numerous studies report low rates of adverse events, with the majority mild, transient, and largely attributed to the body's inflammatory response to the death of the parasites and include itching, rash, swollen lymph nodes, joint paints, fever, and headache. In a study that combined results from trials including more than 50,000 patients, serious events occurred in less than 1% and largely associated with administration in Loa loa. Furthermore, according to the pharmaceutical reference standard Lexicomp, the only medications contraindicated for use with ivermectin are the concurrent administration of antituberculosis and cholera vaccines while the anticoagulant warfarin would require dose monitoring. Another special caution is that immunosuppressed or organ transplant patients who are on calcineurin inhibitors, such as tacrolimus or cyclosporine, or the immunosuppressant sirolimus should have close monitoring of drug levels when on ivermectin given that interactions exist that can affect these levels.

The inventors of ivermectin received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

The article is written in accessible language for laypeople to read.

Here is the abstract:

Recently, evidence has emerged that the oral antiparasitic agent ivermectin exhibits numerous antiviral and anti-inflammatory mechanisms with trial results reporting significant outcome benefits. Given some have not passed peer review, several expert groups including Unitaid/World Health Organization have undertaken a systematic global effort to contact all active trial investigators to rapidly gather the data needed to grade and perform meta-analyses.

Data Sources:

Data were sourced from published peer-reviewed studies, manuscripts posted to preprint servers, expert meta-analyses, and numerous epidemiological analyses of regions with ivermectin distribution campaigns.

Therapeutic Advances:

A large majority of randomized and observational controlled trials of ivermectin are reporting repeated, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes. Numerous prophylaxis trials demonstrate that regular ivermectin use leads to large reductions in transmission. Multiple, large “natural experiments” occurred in regions that initiated “ivermectin distribution” campaigns followed by tight, reproducible, temporally associated decreases in case counts and case fatality rates compared with nearby regions without such campaigns.

Conclusions:

Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.

And here is the conclusion of the article:

Because of the urgency of the pandemic, and in response to the surprising persistent inaction by the leading PHA's, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Panel was recently coordinated by the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd to more rapidly formulate an ivermectin treatment guideline using the standard guideline development process followed by the WHO. Made up of long-time research consultants to numerous national and international public health organizations including the WHO, they convened both a steering committee and a technical working group that then performed a systematic review and meta-analysis. On February 12, 2021, a meeting was held that included an international consortium of 75 practitioners, researchers, specialists, and patient representatives representing 16 countries and most regions of the world. This Recommendation Development Panel was presented the results of the meta-analysis of 18 treatment RCTs and 3 prophylaxis RCTs including more than 2500 patients along with a summary of the observational trials and the epidemiologic analyses related to regional ivermectin use. After a discussion period, a vote was held on multiple aspects of the data on ivermectin, according to standard WHO guideline development processes. The Panel found the certainty of evidence for ivermectin's effects on survival to be strong and they recommended unconditional adoption for use in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19.

In summary, based on the totality of the trials and epidemiologic evidence presented in this review along with the preliminary findings of the Unitaid/WHO meta-analysis of treatment RCTs and the guideline recommendation from the international BIRD conference, ivermectin should be globally and systematically deployed in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

(read more)

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