Comments 1 - 4 of 4 Search these comments
Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher, has questioned the safety of the drug.
“Ivermectin is a chemical therapeutic agent, and it has significant risks associated with it,” he said in a previous interview. “We should be very cautious about using this type of medication to treat a viral disease that the vast majority of the public is going to recover from even without this treatment.”
During Schwartz’s study, there was not any signal of significant side effects among ivermectin users.
Only five patients were referred to hospitals, with four of them being in the placebo arm.
When co-morbidities are removed from the study ...
But will scientific evidence of the efficacy of Ivermectin make even the slightest difference when all positions of authority are occupied by agents of Pfizer, Moderna, etc?
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-scientist-says-covid-19-could-be-treated-for-under-1day-675612
Ivermectin, a drug used to fight parasites in third-world countries, could help reduce the length of infection for people who contract coronavirus for less than a $1 a day, according to recent research by Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer.
Prof. Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba, conducted a randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial from May 15, 2020, through the end of January 2021 to evaluate the effectiveness of ivermectin in reducing viral shedding among nonhospitalized patients with mild to moderate COVID-19.
Ivermectin has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration since 1987. The drug’s discoverers were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine for its treatment of onchocerciasis, a disease caused by infection with a parasitic roundworm.
The drug is also extremely economical. A study published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Therapeutics showed that the cost of ivermectin for other treatments in Bangladesh is around $0.60 to $1.80 for a five-day course. It costs up to $10 a day in Israel, Schwartz said.
In Schwartz’s study, some 89 eligible volunteers over the age of 18 who were diagnosed with coronavirus and staying in state-run COVID-19 hotels were divided into two groups: 50% received ivermectin, and 50% received a placebo, according to their weight. They were given the pills for three days in a row, an hour before a meal.
The volunteers were tested using a standard nasopharyngeal swab PCR test with the goal of evaluating whether there was a reduction in viral load by the sixth day – the third day after termination of the treatment. They were swabbed every two days.
Nearly 72% of volunteers treated with ivermectin tested negative for the virus by day six. In contrast, only 50% of those who received the placebo tested negative.
IN ADDITION, the study looked at culture viability, meaning how infectious the patients were, and found that only 13% of ivermectin patients were infectious after six days, compared with 50% of the placebo group – almost four times as many.
“Our study shows first and foremost that ivermectin has antiviral activity,” Schwartz said. “It also shows that there is almost a 100% chance that a person will be noninfectious in four to six days, which could lead to shortening isolation time for these people. This could have a huge economic and social impact.”
The study appeared on the MedRxiv health-research sharing site. It has not yet been peer reviewed.
Schwartz said other similar studies – though not all of them conducted to the same double-blind and placebo standards as his – also showed a favorable impact of ivermectin treatment.
His study did not prove ivermectin was effective as a prophylactic, meaning that it could prevent disease, he cautioned, nor did it show that it reduces the chances of hospitalization. However, other studies have shown such evidence, he added.
For example, the study published earlier this year in the American Journal of Therapeutics highlighted that “a review by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance summarized findings from 27 studies on the effects of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection, concluding that ivermectin ‘demonstrates a strong signal of therapeutic efficacy’ against COVID-19.”
“Another recent review found that ivermectin reduced deaths by 75%,” the report said.
BUT IVERMECTIN is not without controversy, and hence, despite the high levels of coronavirus worldwide, neither the FDA nor the World Health Organization have been willing to approve it for use in the fight against the virus.
Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher, has questioned the safety of the drug.
“Ivermectin is a chemical therapeutic agent, and it has significant risks associated with it,” he said in a previous interview. “We should be very cautious about using this type of medication to treat a viral disease that the vast majority of the public is going to recover from even without this treatment.”
During Schwartz’s study, there was not any signal of significant side effects among ivermectin users.
Only five patients were referred to hospitals, with four of them being in the placebo arm.